Undertaking the API project – dividend calendar

The best way to learn is by doing. So, we will build a working API and secure it. The API won't be perfect and there will be room for improvement. However, you are free to implement these improvements yourself and expand on the project as you wish. The main goal here is to have a fully functioning API that does one thing: return financial data that lists all the company dividends that will be paid in the current year.

Our dividend calendar API, which we will be building in this chapter, is an API that is authenticated with an API key. Depending on what key is used, authorization will determine whether the user is internal or external. The controller will then execute the appropriate method, depending on the type of user. Only the internal user method will be implemented, but you are free to implement the external user method yourself as a training exercise.

The internal method extracts an API key from Azure Key...