Build an API Using Go and MySQL

The project scope is to build an API to manage content posts. You’ll create an API with three functionalities: create a post, read a single post, and list posts. The database is MySQL installed in localhost.

The database library is using https://github.com/jmoiron/sqlx.

The HTTP routing library is using https://github.com/gin-gonic/gin.

Since the Go community already has a wonderful library, there is almost no reason to write everything from scratch.

Application Design

Image for post

Project Application Design

We have two packages: main and post.

The main package is an executable package in Golang that runs the application. It consists of an instance from the package post (postClient) and three functions to handle routing (listPost, readPost, and createPost).

The post package is the package that interacts with the database to manage the post. It has two object types: Client and Post. Client is an interface to use the package. Post is an abstraction of the real-world content post model. The instance of Client has three functionalities to run a query or insert to the database.

The database structure of this project is only one table named “post” to store the object Post in the package post. The table structure is the following.

Code

'post’ package

These following code blocks explain how we build the Client and Post types and the NewClient function that requires DB input. The DB input is using a package that is initialized outside the package. The idea of this approach is the package does not care who and what creates the Client instance, as long as it provides a working DB connection pool. The inline comment explains the code.

// Client is instance of module, the attribute is DB instance
	type Client struct {
		DB *sqlx.DB
	}

	// NewClient is function to create new instance of Post module.
	func NewClient(db *sqlx.DB) (c Client) {
		return Client{
			DB: db,
		}
	}

	// Post is object structure of real-world post model
	type Post struct {
		ID         int64     `json:"id"`
		Content    string    `json:"content"`
		CreateTime time.Time `json:"create_time"`
	}

The next code block shows the function inside the Client. All of the functions are using a function from sqlx.

// CreatePost is function to create new content, require a content in string
	func (c *Client) CreatePost(content string) (id int64, err error) {
		// run the insert script to db
		result, err := c.DB.Exec(`
			INSERT INTO post (content, create_time)
			VALUES (?, now())
		`,
			content)
		if err != nil {
			log.Println(err)
			return
		}

		// get the last insert id
		id, err = result.LastInsertId()
		if err != nil {
			log.Println(err)
			return
		}

		return
	}

	// ReadPost is function to read single post
	func (c *Client) ReadPost(id int64) (post Post, err error) {
		// run the query with given id
		row := c.DB.QueryRow(`
				SELECT id, content, create_time
				FROM post
				WHERE id = ?`,
			id)

		// assign the query result to 'post' object
		err = row.Scan(&post.ID,
			&post.Content,
			&post.CreateTime)

		if err != nil {
			log.Println(err)
			return
		}

		return
	}

	// ListPost is function to read list of post with limit
	func (c *Client) ListPost(limit int64) (posts []Post, err error) {
		// run the query with limit
		rows, err := c.DB.Query(`
				SELECT id, content, create_time
				FROM post
				ORDER BY id DESC
				LIMIT ?`,
			limit)

		if err != nil {
			log.Println(err)
			return
		}

		// loop the result and assign each row to single object
		defer rows.Close()
		for rows.Next() {
			post := Post{}

			err = rows.Scan(&post.ID,
				&post.Content,
				&post.CreateTime)

			if err != nil {
				log.Println(err)
				return
			}
			posts = append(posts, post)

		}

		return
	}

#software-engineering #programming #golang #api #data-science

What is GEEK

Buddha Community

Chloe Butler

1667425440

Pdf2gerb: Perl Script Converts PDF Files to Gerber format

pdf2gerb

Perl script converts PDF files to Gerber format

Pdf2Gerb generates Gerber 274X photoplotting and Excellon drill files from PDFs of a PCB. Up to three PDFs are used: the top copper layer, the bottom copper layer (for 2-sided PCBs), and an optional silk screen layer. The PDFs can be created directly from any PDF drawing software, or a PDF print driver can be used to capture the Print output if the drawing software does not directly support output to PDF.

The general workflow is as follows:

Design the PCB using your favorite CAD or drawing software.
Print the top and bottom copper and top silk screen layers to a PDF file.
Run Pdf2Gerb on the PDFs to create Gerber and Excellon files.
Use a Gerber viewer to double-check the output against the original PCB design.
Make adjustments as needed.
Submit the files to a PCB manufacturer.

Please note that Pdf2Gerb does NOT perform DRC (Design Rule Checks), as these will vary according to individual PCB manufacturer conventions and capabilities. Also note that Pdf2Gerb is not perfect, so the output files must always be checked before submitting them. As of version 1.6, Pdf2Gerb supports most PCB elements, such as round and square pads, round holes, traces, SMD pads, ground planes, no-fill areas, and panelization. However, because it interprets the graphical output of a Print function, there are limitations in what it can recognize (or there may be bugs).

See docs/Pdf2Gerb.pdf for install/setup, config, usage, and other info.

pdf2gerb_cfg.pm

#Pdf2Gerb config settings:
#Put this file in same folder/directory as pdf2gerb.pl itself (global settings),
#or copy to another folder/directory with PDFs if you want PCB-specific settings.
#There is only one user of this file, so we don't need a custom package or namespace.
#NOTE: all constants defined in here will be added to main namespace.
#package pdf2gerb_cfg;

use strict; #trap undef vars (easier debug)
use warnings; #other useful info (easier debug)


##############################################################################################
#configurable settings:
#change values here instead of in main pfg2gerb.pl file

use constant WANT_COLORS => ($^O !~ m/Win/); #ANSI colors no worky on Windows? this must be set < first DebugPrint() call

#just a little warning; set realistic expectations:
#DebugPrint("${\(CYAN)}Pdf2Gerb.pl ${\(VERSION)}, $^O O/S\n${\(YELLOW)}${\(BOLD)}${\(ITALIC)}This is EXPERIMENTAL software.  \nGerber files MAY CONTAIN ERRORS.  Please CHECK them before fabrication!${\(RESET)}", 0); #if WANT_DEBUG

use constant METRIC => FALSE; #set to TRUE for metric units (only affect final numbers in output files, not internal arithmetic)
use constant APERTURE_LIMIT => 0; #34; #max #apertures to use; generate warnings if too many apertures are used (0 to not check)
use constant DRILL_FMT => '2.4'; #'2.3'; #'2.4' is the default for PCB fab; change to '2.3' for CNC

use constant WANT_DEBUG => 0; #10; #level of debug wanted; higher == more, lower == less, 0 == none
use constant GERBER_DEBUG => 0; #level of debug to include in Gerber file; DON'T USE FOR FABRICATION
use constant WANT_STREAMS => FALSE; #TRUE; #save decompressed streams to files (for debug)
use constant WANT_ALLINPUT => FALSE; #TRUE; #save entire input stream (for debug ONLY)

#DebugPrint(sprintf("${\(CYAN)}DEBUG: stdout %d, gerber %d, want streams? %d, all input? %d, O/S: $^O, Perl: $]${\(RESET)}\n", WANT_DEBUG, GERBER_DEBUG, WANT_STREAMS, WANT_ALLINPUT), 1);
#DebugPrint(sprintf("max int = %d, min int = %d\n", MAXINT, MININT), 1); 

#define standard trace and pad sizes to reduce scaling or PDF rendering errors:
#This avoids weird aperture settings and replaces them with more standardized values.
#(I'm not sure how photoplotters handle strange sizes).
#Fewer choices here gives more accurate mapping in the final Gerber files.
#units are in inches
use constant TOOL_SIZES => #add more as desired
(
#round or square pads (> 0) and drills (< 0):
    .010, -.001,  #tiny pads for SMD; dummy drill size (too small for practical use, but needed so StandardTool will use this entry)
    .031, -.014,  #used for vias
    .041, -.020,  #smallest non-filled plated hole
    .051, -.025,
    .056, -.029,  #useful for IC pins
    .070, -.033,
    .075, -.040,  #heavier leads
#    .090, -.043,  #NOTE: 600 dpi is not high enough resolution to reliably distinguish between .043" and .046", so choose 1 of the 2 here
    .100, -.046,
    .115, -.052,
    .130, -.061,
    .140, -.067,
    .150, -.079,
    .175, -.088,
    .190, -.093,
    .200, -.100,
    .220, -.110,
    .160, -.125,  #useful for mounting holes
#some additional pad sizes without holes (repeat a previous hole size if you just want the pad size):
    .090, -.040,  #want a .090 pad option, but use dummy hole size
    .065, -.040, #.065 x .065 rect pad
    .035, -.040, #.035 x .065 rect pad
#traces:
    .001,  #too thin for real traces; use only for board outlines
    .006,  #minimum real trace width; mainly used for text
    .008,  #mainly used for mid-sized text, not traces
    .010,  #minimum recommended trace width for low-current signals
    .012,
    .015,  #moderate low-voltage current
    .020,  #heavier trace for power, ground (even if a lighter one is adequate)
    .025,
    .030,  #heavy-current traces; be careful with these ones!
    .040,
    .050,
    .060,
    .080,
    .100,
    .120,
);
#Areas larger than the values below will be filled with parallel lines:
#This cuts down on the number of aperture sizes used.
#Set to 0 to always use an aperture or drill, regardless of size.
use constant { MAX_APERTURE => max((TOOL_SIZES)) + .004, MAX_DRILL => -min((TOOL_SIZES)) + .004 }; #max aperture and drill sizes (plus a little tolerance)
#DebugPrint(sprintf("using %d standard tool sizes: %s, max aper %.3f, max drill %.3f\n", scalar((TOOL_SIZES)), join(", ", (TOOL_SIZES)), MAX_APERTURE, MAX_DRILL), 1);

#NOTE: Compare the PDF to the original CAD file to check the accuracy of the PDF rendering and parsing!
#for example, the CAD software I used generated the following circles for holes:
#CAD hole size:   parsed PDF diameter:      error:
#  .014                .016                +.002
#  .020                .02267              +.00267
#  .025                .026                +.001
#  .029                .03167              +.00267
#  .033                .036                +.003
#  .040                .04267              +.00267
#This was usually ~ .002" - .003" too big compared to the hole as displayed in the CAD software.
#To compensate for PDF rendering errors (either during CAD Print function or PDF parsing logic), adjust the values below as needed.
#units are pixels; for example, a value of 2.4 at 600 dpi = .0004 inch, 2 at 600 dpi = .0033"
use constant
{
    HOLE_ADJUST => -0.004 * 600, #-2.6, #holes seemed to be slightly oversized (by .002" - .004"), so shrink them a little
    RNDPAD_ADJUST => -0.003 * 600, #-2, #-2.4, #round pads seemed to be slightly oversized, so shrink them a little
    SQRPAD_ADJUST => +0.001 * 600, #+.5, #square pads are sometimes too small by .00067, so bump them up a little
    RECTPAD_ADJUST => 0, #(pixels) rectangular pads seem to be okay? (not tested much)
    TRACE_ADJUST => 0, #(pixels) traces seemed to be okay?
    REDUCE_TOLERANCE => .001, #(inches) allow this much variation when reducing circles and rects
};

#Also, my CAD's Print function or the PDF print driver I used was a little off for circles, so define some additional adjustment values here:
#Values are added to X/Y coordinates; units are pixels; for example, a value of 1 at 600 dpi would be ~= .002 inch
use constant
{
    CIRCLE_ADJUST_MINX => 0,
    CIRCLE_ADJUST_MINY => -0.001 * 600, #-1, #circles were a little too high, so nudge them a little lower
    CIRCLE_ADJUST_MAXX => +0.001 * 600, #+1, #circles were a little too far to the left, so nudge them a little to the right
    CIRCLE_ADJUST_MAXY => 0,
    SUBST_CIRCLE_CLIPRECT => FALSE, #generate circle and substitute for clip rects (to compensate for the way some CAD software draws circles)
    WANT_CLIPRECT => TRUE, #FALSE, #AI doesn't need clip rect at all? should be on normally?
    RECT_COMPLETION => FALSE, #TRUE, #fill in 4th side of rect when 3 sides found
};

#allow .012 clearance around pads for solder mask:
#This value effectively adjusts pad sizes in the TOOL_SIZES list above (only for solder mask layers).
use constant SOLDER_MARGIN => +.012; #units are inches

#line join/cap styles:
use constant
{
    CAP_NONE => 0, #butt (none); line is exact length
    CAP_ROUND => 1, #round cap/join; line overhangs by a semi-circle at either end
    CAP_SQUARE => 2, #square cap/join; line overhangs by a half square on either end
    CAP_OVERRIDE => FALSE, #cap style overrides drawing logic
};
    
#number of elements in each shape type:
use constant
{
    RECT_SHAPELEN => 6, #x0, y0, x1, y1, count, "rect" (start, end corners)
    LINE_SHAPELEN => 6, #x0, y0, x1, y1, count, "line" (line seg)
    CURVE_SHAPELEN => 10, #xstart, ystart, x0, y0, x1, y1, xend, yend, count, "curve" (bezier 2 points)
    CIRCLE_SHAPELEN => 5, #x, y, 5, count, "circle" (center + radius)
};
#const my %SHAPELEN =
#Readonly my %SHAPELEN =>
our %SHAPELEN =
(
    rect => RECT_SHAPELEN,
    line => LINE_SHAPELEN,
    curve => CURVE_SHAPELEN,
    circle => CIRCLE_SHAPELEN,
);

#panelization:
#This will repeat the entire body the number of times indicated along the X or Y axes (files grow accordingly).
#Display elements that overhang PCB boundary can be squashed or left as-is (typically text or other silk screen markings).
#Set "overhangs" TRUE to allow overhangs, FALSE to truncate them.
#xpad and ypad allow margins to be added around outer edge of panelized PCB.
use constant PANELIZE => {'x' => 1, 'y' => 1, 'xpad' => 0, 'ypad' => 0, 'overhangs' => TRUE}; #number of times to repeat in X and Y directions

# Set this to 1 if you need TurboCAD support.
#$turboCAD = FALSE; #is this still needed as an option?

#CIRCAD pad generation uses an appropriate aperture, then moves it (stroke) "a little" - we use this to find pads and distinguish them from PCB holes. 
use constant PAD_STROKE => 0.3; #0.0005 * 600; #units are pixels
#convert very short traces to pads or holes:
use constant TRACE_MINLEN => .001; #units are inches
#use constant ALWAYS_XY => TRUE; #FALSE; #force XY even if X or Y doesn't change; NOTE: needs to be TRUE for all pads to show in FlatCAM and ViewPlot
use constant REMOVE_POLARITY => FALSE; #TRUE; #set to remove subtractive (negative) polarity; NOTE: must be FALSE for ground planes

#PDF uses "points", each point = 1/72 inch
#combined with a PDF scale factor of .12, this gives 600 dpi resolution (1/72 * .12 = 600 dpi)
use constant INCHES_PER_POINT => 1/72; #0.0138888889; #multiply point-size by this to get inches

# The precision used when computing a bezier curve. Higher numbers are more precise but slower (and generate larger files).
#$bezierPrecision = 100;
use constant BEZIER_PRECISION => 36; #100; #use const; reduced for faster rendering (mainly used for silk screen and thermal pads)

# Ground planes and silk screen or larger copper rectangles or circles are filled line-by-line using this resolution.
use constant FILL_WIDTH => .01; #fill at most 0.01 inch at a time

# The max number of characters to read into memory
use constant MAX_BYTES => 10 * M; #bumped up to 10 MB, use const

use constant DUP_DRILL1 => TRUE; #FALSE; #kludge: ViewPlot doesn't load drill files that are too small so duplicate first tool

my $runtime = time(); #Time::HiRes::gettimeofday(); #measure my execution time

print STDERR "Loaded config settings from '${\(__FILE__)}'.\n";
1; #last value must be truthful to indicate successful load


#############################################################################################
#junk/experiment:

#use Package::Constants;
#use Exporter qw(import); #https://perldoc.perl.org/Exporter.html

#my $caller = "pdf2gerb::";

#sub cfg
#{
#    my $proto = shift;
#    my $class = ref($proto) || $proto;
#    my $settings =
#    {
#        $WANT_DEBUG => 990, #10; #level of debug wanted; higher == more, lower == less, 0 == none
#    };
#    bless($settings, $class);
#    return $settings;
#}

#use constant HELLO => "hi there2"; #"main::HELLO" => "hi there";
#use constant GOODBYE => 14; #"main::GOODBYE" => 12;

#print STDERR "read cfg file\n";

#our @EXPORT_OK = Package::Constants->list(__PACKAGE__); #https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=1072691; NOTE: "_OK" skips short/common names

#print STDERR scalar(@EXPORT_OK) . " consts exported:\n";
#foreach(@EXPORT_OK) { print STDERR "$_\n"; }
#my $val = main::thing("xyz");
#print STDERR "caller gave me $val\n";
#foreach my $arg (@ARGV) { print STDERR "arg $arg\n"; }

Download Details:

Author: swannman
Source Code: https://github.com/swannman/pdf2gerb

License: GPL-3.0 license

#perl

Joe Hoppe

1595905879

Best MySQL DigitalOcean Performance – ScaleGrid vs. DigitalOcean Managed Databases

HTML to Markdown

MySQL is the all-time number one open source database in the world, and a staple in RDBMS space. DigitalOcean is quickly building its reputation as the developers cloud by providing an affordable, flexible and easy to use cloud platform for developers to work with. MySQL on DigitalOcean is a natural fit, but what’s the best way to deploy your cloud database? In this post, we are going to compare the top two providers, DigitalOcean Managed Databases for MySQL vs. ScaleGrid MySQL hosting on DigitalOcean.

At a glance – TLDR
ScaleGrid Blog - At a glance overview - 1st pointCompare Throughput
ScaleGrid averages almost 40% higher throughput over DigitalOcean for MySQL, with up to 46% higher throughput in write-intensive workloads. Read now

ScaleGrid Blog - At a glance overview - 2nd pointCompare Latency
On average, ScaleGrid achieves almost 30% lower latency over DigitalOcean for the same deployment configurations. Read now

ScaleGrid Blog - At a glance overview - 3rd pointCompare Pricing
ScaleGrid provides 30% more storage on average vs. DigitalOcean for MySQL at the same affordable price. Read now

MySQL DigitalOcean Performance Benchmark
In this benchmark, we compare equivalent plan sizes between ScaleGrid MySQL on DigitalOcean and DigitalOcean Managed Databases for MySQL. We are going to use a common, popular plan size using the below configurations for this performance benchmark:

Comparison Overview
ScaleGridDigitalOceanInstance TypeMedium: 4 vCPUsMedium: 4 vCPUsMySQL Version8.0.208.0.20RAM8GB8GBSSD140GB115GBDeployment TypeStandaloneStandaloneRegionSF03SF03SupportIncludedBusiness-level support included with account sizes over $500/monthMonthly Price$120$120

As you can see above, ScaleGrid and DigitalOcean offer the same plan configurations across this plan size, apart from SSD where ScaleGrid provides over 20% more storage for the same price.

To ensure the most accurate results in our performance tests, we run the benchmark four times for each comparison to find the average performance across throughput and latency over read-intensive workloads, balanced workloads, and write-intensive workloads.

Throughput
In this benchmark, we measure MySQL throughput in terms of queries per second (QPS) to measure our query efficiency. To quickly summarize the results, we display read-intensive, write-intensive and balanced workload averages below for 150 threads for ScaleGrid vs. DigitalOcean MySQL:

ScaleGrid MySQL vs DigitalOcean Managed Databases - Throughput Performance Graph

For the common 150 thread comparison, ScaleGrid averages almost 40% higher throughput over DigitalOcean for MySQL, with up to 46% higher throughput in write-intensive workloads.

#cloud #database #developer #digital ocean #mysql #performance #scalegrid #95th percentile latency #balanced workloads #developers cloud #digitalocean droplet #digitalocean managed databases #digitalocean performance #digitalocean pricing #higher throughput #latency benchmark #lower latency #mysql benchmark setup #mysql client threads #mysql configuration #mysql digitalocean #mysql latency #mysql on digitalocean #mysql throughput #performance benchmark #queries per second #read-intensive #scalegrid mysql #scalegrid vs. digitalocean #throughput benchmark #write-intensive

Sival Alethea

1624302000

APIs for Beginners - How to use an API (Full Course / Tutorial)

What is an API? Learn all about APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) in this full tutorial for beginners. You will learn what APIs do, why APIs exist, and the many benefits of APIs. APIs are used all the time in programming and web development so it is important to understand how to use them.

You will also get hands-on experience with a few popular web APIs. As long as you know the absolute basics of coding and the web, you’ll have no problem following along.
⭐️ Unit 1 - What is an API
⌨️ Video 1 - Welcome (0:00:00)
⌨️ Video 2 - Defining Interface (0:03:57)
⌨️ Video 3 - Defining API (0:07:51)
⌨️ Video 4 - Remote APIs (0:12:55)
⌨️ Video 5 - How the web works (0:17:04)
⌨️ Video 6 - RESTful API Constraint Scavenger Hunt (0:22:00)

⭐️ Unit 2 - Exploring APIs
⌨️ Video 1 - Exploring an API online (0:27:36)
⌨️ Video 2 - Using an API from the command line (0:44:30)
⌨️ Video 3 - Using Postman to explore APIs (0:53:56)
⌨️ Video 4 - Please please Mr. Postman (1:03:33)
⌨️ Video 5 - Using Helper Libraries (JavaScript) (1:14:41)
⌨️ Video 6 - Using Helper Libraries (Python) (1:24:40)

⭐️ Unit 3 - Using APIs
⌨️ Video 1 - Introducing the project (1:34:18)
⌨️ Video 2 - Flask app (1:36:07)
⌨️ Video 3 - Dealing with API Limits (1:50:00)
⌨️ Video 4 - JavaScript Single Page Application (1:54:27)
⌨️ Video 5 - Moar JavaScript and Recap (2:07:53)
⌨️ Video 6 - Review (2:18:03)
📺 The video in this post was made by freeCodeCamp.org
The origin of the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZvSYJDk-us&list=PLWKjhJtqVAblfum5WiQblKPwIbqYXkDoC&index=5
🔥 If you’re a beginner. I believe the article below will be useful to you ☞ What You Should Know Before Investing in Cryptocurrency - For Beginner
⭐ ⭐ ⭐The project is of interest to the community. Join to Get free ‘GEEK coin’ (GEEKCASH coin)!
☞ **-----CLICK HERE-----**⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Thanks for visiting and watching! Please don’t forget to leave a like, comment and share!

#apis #apis for beginners #how to use an api #apis for beginners - how to use an api #application programming interfaces #learn all about apis

Domingo Jakubowski

1595396220

Top 10 API Security Threats Every API Team Should Know

As more and more data is exposed via APIs either as API-first companies or for the explosion of single page apps/JAMStack, API security can no longer be an afterthought. The hard part about APIs is that it provides direct access to large amounts of data while bypassing browser precautions. Instead of worrying about SQL injection and XSS issues, you should be concerned about the bad actor who was able to paginate through all your customer records and their data.

Typical prevention mechanisms like Captchas and browser fingerprinting won’t work since APIs by design need to handle a very large number of API accesses even by a single customer. So where do you start? The first thing is to put yourself in the shoes of a hacker and then instrument your APIs to detect and block common attacks along with unknown unknowns for zero-day exploits. Some of these are on the OWASP Security API list, but not all.

Insecure pagination and resource limits

Most APIs provide access to resources that are lists of entities such as /users or /widgets. A client such as a browser would typically filter and paginate through this list to limit the number items returned to a client like so:

First Call: GET /items?skip=0&take=10 
Second Call: GET /items?skip=10&take=10

However, if that entity has any PII or other information, then a hacker could scrape that endpoint to get a dump of all entities in your database. This could be most dangerous if those entities accidently exposed PII or other sensitive information, but could also be dangerous in providing competitors or others with adoption and usage stats for your business or provide scammers with a way to get large email lists. See how Venmo data was scraped

A naive protection mechanism would be to check the take count and throw an error if greater than 100 or 1000. The problem with this is two-fold:

For data APIs, legitimate customers may need to fetch and sync a large number of records such as via cron jobs. Artificially small pagination limits can force your API to be very chatty decreasing overall throughput. Max limits are to ensure memory and scalability requirements are met (and prevent certain DDoS attacks), not to guarantee security.
This offers zero protection to a hacker that writes a simple script that sleeps a random delay between repeated accesses.

skip = 0
while True:    response = requests.post('https://api.acmeinc.com/widgets?take=10&skip=' + skip),                      headers={'Authorization': 'Bearer' + ' ' + sys.argv[1]})    print("Fetched 10 items")    sleep(randint(100,1000))    skip += 10

How to secure against pagination attacks

To secure against pagination attacks, you should track how many items of a single resource are accessed within a certain time period for each user or API key rather than just at the request level. By tracking API resource access at the user level, you can block a user or API key once they hit a threshold such as “touched 1,000,000 items in a one hour period”. This is dependent on your API use case and can even be dependent on their subscription with you. Like a Captcha, this can slow down the speed that a hacker can exploit your API, like a Captcha if they have to create a new user account manually to create a new API key.

Insecure API key generation

Most APIs are protected by some sort of API key or JWT (JSON Web Token). This provides a natural way to track and protect your API as API security tools can detect abnormal API behavior and block access to an API key automatically. However, hackers will want to outsmart these mechanisms by generating and using a large pool of API keys from a large number of users just like a web hacker would use a large pool of IP addresses to circumvent DDoS protection.

How to secure against API key pools

The easiest way to secure against these types of attacks is by requiring a human to sign up for your service and generate API keys. Bot traffic can be prevented with things like Captcha and 2-Factor Authentication. Unless there is a legitimate business case, new users who sign up for your service should not have the ability to generate API keys programmatically. Instead, only trusted customers should have the ability to generate API keys programmatically. Go one step further and ensure any anomaly detection for abnormal behavior is done at the user and account level, not just for each API key.

Accidental key exposure

APIs are used in a way that increases the probability credentials are leaked:

APIs are expected to be accessed over indefinite time periods, which increases the probability that a hacker obtains a valid API key that’s not expired. You save that API key in a server environment variable and forget about it. This is a drastic contrast to a user logging into an interactive website where the session expires after a short duration.
The consumer of an API has direct access to the credentials such as when debugging via Postman or CURL. It only takes a single developer to accidently copy/pastes the CURL command containing the API key into a public forum like in GitHub Issues or Stack Overflow.
API keys are usually bearer tokens without requiring any other identifying information. APIs cannot leverage things like one-time use tokens or 2-factor authentication.

If a key is exposed due to user error, one may think you as the API provider has any blame. However, security is all about reducing surface area and risk. Treat your customer data as if it’s your own and help them by adding guards that prevent accidental key exposure.

How to prevent accidental key exposure

The easiest way to prevent key exposure is by leveraging two tokens rather than one. A refresh token is stored as an environment variable and can only be used to generate short lived access tokens. Unlike the refresh token, these short lived tokens can access the resources, but are time limited such as in hours or days.

The customer will store the refresh token with other API keys. Then your SDK will generate access tokens on SDK init or when the last access token expires. If a CURL command gets pasted into a GitHub issue, then a hacker would need to use it within hours reducing the attack vector (unless it was the actual refresh token which is low probability)

Exposure to DDoS attacks

APIs open up entirely new business models where customers can access your API platform programmatically. However, this can make DDoS protection tricky. Most DDoS protection is designed to absorb and reject a large number of requests from bad actors during DDoS attacks but still need to let the good ones through. This requires fingerprinting the HTTP requests to check against what looks like bot traffic. This is much harder for API products as all traffic looks like bot traffic and is not coming from a browser where things like cookies are present.

Stopping DDoS attacks

The magical part about APIs is almost every access requires an API Key. If a request doesn’t have an API key, you can automatically reject it which is lightweight on your servers (Ensure authentication is short circuited very early before later middleware like request JSON parsing). So then how do you handle authenticated requests? The easiest is to leverage rate limit counters for each API key such as to handle X requests per minute and reject those above the threshold with a 429 HTTP response. There are a variety of algorithms to do this such as leaky bucket and fixed window counters.

Incorrect server security

APIs are no different than web servers when it comes to good server hygiene. Data can be leaked due to misconfigured SSL certificate or allowing non-HTTPS traffic. For modern applications, there is very little reason to accept non-HTTPS requests, but a customer could mistakenly issue a non HTTP request from their application or CURL exposing the API key. APIs do not have the protection of a browser so things like HSTS or redirect to HTTPS offer no protection.

How to ensure proper SSL

Test your SSL implementation over at Qualys SSL Test or similar tool. You should also block all non-HTTP requests which can be done within your load balancer. You should also remove any HTTP headers scrub any error messages that leak implementation details. If your API is used only by your own apps or can only be accessed server-side, then review Authoritative guide to Cross-Origin Resource Sharing for REST APIs

Incorrect caching headers

APIs provide access to dynamic data that’s scoped to each API key. Any caching implementation should have the ability to scope to an API key to prevent cross-pollution. Even if you don’t cache anything in your infrastructure, you could expose your customers to security holes. If a customer with a proxy server was using multiple API keys such as one for development and one for production, then they could see cross-pollinated data.

#api management #api security #api best practices #api providers #security analytics #api management policies #api access tokens #api access #api security risks #api access keys

Houston Sipes

1603155600

Build a Go Web API with the New Digital Ocean App Platform: A How-To Guide

Recently, Digital Ocean announced they’re entering the PaaS market with their new application platform. They’ve hosted virtual machines (droplets) and Kubernetes based services for years, but now they’re creating a platform that’s a simple point and click to get an application up and running.

So I decided to try it. In this tutorial, we’re going to build an application on that platform. I will use Go to make a small web API and have it backed by a SQLite database. I’ll show you the steps required, and we’ll see just how easy it is (or isn’t) to deploy applications on the platform.

We’ll create a small service that:

Takes a city name as input
searches against a database
Returns ZIP code and other information for that city

If you want to follow along with this tutorial, here’s what you’ll need:

Computer with Go Installed
A Digital Ocean Account

- DB Browser for SQL Lite

- Download this CSV

Creating Your Repository

The first thing we’ll need to do is create a repository on GitHub. The Digital Ocean app platform uses your repos to pull code from and builds from there.

Now, clone the Digital Ocean sample repository to another folder:

Now, you can fork this. However, since we’re not going to be contributing changes back to that repo, and we don’t want to pull changes from it, it’s essentially a new project. So I’m just going to copy the files from that repo into mine.

Now I have the sample code in my own repo:

Cool, now let’s push it up to Github.

git add .
git commmit -m "Initial Commit"
git push origin main

Now the sample project is available on my Github, where I can connect to it.

#programming #api #golang #golang-api #api-development #go #build-a-go-web-api #digital-ocean