Best practices for building secure API Keys

We all know how valuable APIs are. They’re the gateway to exploring other services, integrating with them, and building great solutions faster.

You might have built or are thinking of building APIs for other developers to use. An API needs some form of authentication to provide authorised access to the data it returns.

There are several authentication standards available today such as API Keys, OAuth, JWT, etc.

In this article, we’ll look at how to correctly manage API Keys to access APIs.

So Why API Keys?

API Keys are simple to use, they’re short, static, and don’t expire unless revoked. They provide an easy way for multiple services to communicate.

If you provide an API for your clients to consume, it’s essential for you to build it in the right way.

Let’s get started, and I’ll show you how to build API Keys the right way.

API Key Generation

Since the API key itself is an identity by which to identify the application or the user, it needs to be unique, random and non-guessable. API keys that are generated must also use Alphanumeric and special characters. An example of such an API key is zaCELgL.0imfnc8mVLWwsAawjYr4Rx-Af50DDqtlx.