What is the best practice for handling rate limiting in REST APIs?

Short answer: Use throttling to limit requests per minute/hour per client. Return 429 Too Many Requests. Provide Retry-After header. Tools: API Gateway, NGINX, Middleware.

Real-world example (ShopNest)

Creating an order is POST /api/orders → 201 with Location header. Fetching is GET /api/orders/{id} → 200 or 404.

Say this in the interview

1. Define — one clear sentence (the short answer above).
2. Example — relate it to a project like ShopNest or your real work.
3. Trade-off — when you would not use it.