Getting started with authentication and authorization

Authentication and authorization are two important aspects of security. Although these two terms are often used together, they are distinct concepts. Before we dive into the code, it is important to gain an understanding of the differences between authentication and authorization.

We have already built some web API applications. However, these APIs will be publicly available to anyone who knows the URL. For some resources, we want to restrict access to only authenticated users. For example, we have a resource that contains some sensitive information that should not be available to everyone. In this case, the application should be able to identify the user who is making the request. If the user is anonymous, the application should not allow the user to access the resource. This is where authentication comes into play.

For some scenarios, we also want to restrict access to some specific users. For example, we want to allow authenticated...