Crashing Fibonacci API with Memory Watcher

Overview

This example, playground repository contains a setup of a Go application that provides a REST API for calculating Fibonacci numbers. It includes a memory monitoring component that ensures the application does not exceed a predefined memory limit and can crash itself if necessary. Additionally, this project includes a script for load testing the API using Vegeta, a versatile HTTP load testing tool.

Installation and Setup

Prerequisites

• Go: Ensure you have Go installed on your system. You can download it from the official site.

• Vegeta: Vegeta needs to be installed for load testing. Install it using Homebrew on macOS:

  brew install vegeta
  

  Or download and install it from GitHub for other platforms.

Launching the API

Run the application using the following command from the root of the repository:

go run cmd/crashing-this-fibo/main.go

You can also opt to build them and run the compiled binary.

Load Testing with Vegeta

Navigate to the scripts directory where the load_test.sh script is located. Make the script executable (if not already done):

chmod +x load_test.sh

Launch the load test by running:

./load_test.sh

Configuration

Adjusting the Load Test Rate

You can modify the rate of requests in the load_test.sh script. Find the line with -rate=10 and change the rate to your desired number of requests per second.

Setting the Memory Limit

The memory limit is controlled by an environment variable APP_MEMORY_LIMIT. This variable is read as megabytes. To set the memory limit to 5 MB, for example, use the following command before starting the application:

export APP_MEMORY_LIMIT=5

Adjust this value based on your system's capacity and testing requirements.

Conclusion

This repo serves as a playground and example on setting up a Go REST API app able to crashing itself. Blog post will follow.