core: Steam online, API timeout and full shutdown after a period

The problem

The last couple months (estimated) the Steam Online API integration has been working less than optimal. When you configure a set of accounts to check status on (for myself I have 25 accounts selected from my friend list), it will work okayish for a day or two, and then it will show unavailable more and more often, and over time just completely time out with a permanent unavailable.

If you leave the integration disabled for more than 24 hours, you can restart it and the cycle starts over again. I read somewhere that Steam API has 100.000 requests for day as limit, so my question he is; can we set a timer on when we check status for Steam? It would be sufficient with 1 time per minute, for a 24 hour period it would mean 36.000 API calls per day (if it require one call per account).

Last year this integration was “slower” in the sense that it had a 30 seconds update frequency, but I do think it’s now quicker than 30 seconds, and maybe it should be reverted to keep the API session alive and not forcing it to timeout/close down.

What version of Home Assistant Core has the issue?

core-2023.6.3

What was the last working version of Home Assistant Core?

No response

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant Core

Integration causing the issue

Steam Online

Link to integration documentation on our website

https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/steam_online

Diagnostics information

Logger aiohttp.server.txt

Example YAML snippet

No response

Anything in the logs that might be useful for us?

File "/usr/local/lib/python3.11/site-packages/steam/api.py", line 171, in download
    raise HTTPError("Server connection failed: {0} ({1})".format(reason, code))
steam.api.HTTPError: Server connection failed: Too Many Requests (429)


Logger: homeassistant.config_entries
Source: config_entries.py:429
First occurred: 12:07:45 (1 occurrences)
Last logged: 12:07:45

Config entry '<account-name>' for steam_online integration not ready yet: Server took too long to respond; Retrying in background

Additional information

No response

About this issue

Original URL
State: open
Created a year ago
Comments: 45 (8 by maintainers)

Links to this issue

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Most upvoted comments

@mkanet I’ve implemented your fix. No errors for me in 24 hours using 14 entities. I will add more entities now and keep you posted.

Thanks for confirming. I didnt want to submit a PR for this without getting confirmation that it works.

No errors in 24 hours using 22 entities.

nopantsfriday on Feb 11, 2024

Maybe you should read what I said over again? The integration is using Steam API and Steam is throttling badly, it throws up 429 errors (too many requests) after the first request. So it’s not the developers fault.

I wish the integration would have a choice for refresh rate though, and a function to keep the last state until it gets a new valid reply.

🙄 I went ahead and fixed the issue directly in the source files using the API guidelines described below: https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3492005739881311668/ According to findings on the ArchiSteamFarm github, extension developers will need to forcibly cap the number of matches returned to 2000 (via the “count” parameter), and introduce other delays to guarantee only 1 request every 4 seconds.

A quick description of what I did:

I made the necessary changes to the source code; specifically coordinator.py
Dropped the source files to \config\custom_components\steam_online
Reboot Home Assistant

…and, whala! It started working correctly right after HA reboot! It’s been working ever since.

For a quick fix, just follow these instructions:

Download: https://1drv.ms/u/s!Ao1OD_Zte2lpo4ZJkh1bdSogoDZpzg?e=Om55Jh
Extract the folder steam_online (and its contents) from the downloaded zip file to: \config\custom_components\ so it ultimately looks like: ``\config\custom_components\steam_online`
Reboot

You can see the changes I made if you look at the modified coordinator.py when compared to the original one coordinator (original).py with a Diff tool.

Hopefully, an official HA Core Integration developer can make these changes to the official repo. I can’t do it myself.

Enjoy!

PS: A special thanks to ArchiSteamFarm GitHub developers who originally identified what specifically was causing the issue and how to fix it.

WARNING: I need to do a little more testing. I think I actually need the original Steam integration GUI even for the custom integration that replaces it. More soon…

mkanet on Jan 8, 2024

The user-based throttle function you are seeking has been discussed above. What still would be implemented is an exponential back-off when we hit 429 errors. A function like that should belong in the PyPI package IMO. That would not be available for manipulation by the user.

Edit: or some other calculation. This might be available in API returned data or it might not be. Some APIs actually tell us how many calls are still available.

tkdrob on Jul 23, 2023

I am having the same problems and I am only monitoring 1 account. I certainly don’t think that I am reaching steams api limit.

TNTPro on Jul 9, 2023

I do also get this error quite often when I try to configure, I need to then restart HA and then try again

If you’re talking about self-automating the process, I assume you mean disable the polling here?

And then use Reload for the whole service on your own given timer/automation?

Edit: Previously I used to do a reload_config_entry and it works when you do it on every single entity, but I assume there is a sensible way to reload the whole integration, that I am just not finding?

Mithrox on Jul 2, 2023