How do you implement API Keys? (programming.dev)

submitted 6 days ago by ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev to c/rust@programming.dev

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So I've had this idea for an API for a while but the problem I keep coming back to is authentication. I'm using rocket to actually code it. I looked through the rocket docs and it looks like the closest thing to API key authentication it has are cookies.

I then went and looked at some other APIs to see if I can copy their layouts and it looks like a lot of them use an API key and then a secret API key for authentication. Did some more googling and stackoverflow said that it's more secure to use a pair like that.

So that leaves me with the actual question: how do you actually implement this feature? Do you just generate API keys and throw them a database to be looked up later? Should they be written/read to a file to be used later(probably not a good option I'd guess).

Just for reference I'm using rocket, sqlx and postgres.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev 3 points 6 days ago

Thanks for the update, I wrote using rocket a few years ago so I figured everyone was still using that!