Authenticating Flask API with an existing Rails App

Question

I have an existing web application developed with Ruby on Rails and I would like to create a simple Flask API to make request over the existing tables and authenticate the API with the preexisting users. What would be the best approach?

Answer 1

I ended up creating an api generator module and requiring it in the user model, setting a before_validation so when a new user signs up the api key is generated. Then the user can authenticate against the flask api with the api key.

# lib/apy_key.rb

module ApiKey
  def self.generator
    SecureRandom.base64(40)
  end
end

# models/user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
...
  require './lib/api_key.rb'
  validates_presence_of :api_key
  validates_uniqueness_of :api_key
  before_validation :set_api_key

  private
    def set_api_key
      self.api_key = ApiKey.generator
    end

end