Table of Contents
Use authentication mechanisms to restrict access
Verify and filter requests and responses
Control the frequency of call to prevent abuse and DDoS
Home CMS Tutorial WordPress How to handle external API calls securely

How to handle external API calls securely

Jul 24, 2025 am 12:07 AM

To securely call external APIs, you need to start from three aspects: access control, data protection and response verification. ① Use API Key, OAuth Token or JWT and store the key in environment variables or key management services, and rotate regularly; avoid the front-end exposing the key, select OAuth 2.0 and adopt the appropriate authorization mode. ② Verify the structure and content of the data returned by the interface, confirm the Content-Type and field types, check the status code, filter the XSS content, and set a reasonable timeout time. ③ Use token bucket or leak bucket algorithm to achieve current limiting, record user API usage, and reduce duplicate requests in combination with cache to prevent triggering the other party from limiting the current or blocking the IP.

The core of handling security issues in external API calls is to control access rights, protect sensitive data, and verify return content. You cannot rely solely on the reliability of third parties, but also have to take good protection from your own system.

Use authentication mechanisms to restrict access

All external API requests should carry identity credentials, such as API Key, OAuth Token, or JWT. These credentials ensure that only authorized applications or users can call the target interface.

  • It is recommended to store the keys in a secure place, such as environment variables or key management services, rather than hard-coded in the code.
  • Regularly rotate keys to prevent abuse after long-term exposure.
  • If using OAuth, try to select version 2.0 and adopt appropriate authorization mode (such as client credentials mode is suitable for inter-server communication).

Some developers will put API Key in front-end code, which is a common but dangerous approach. Once leaked, the attacker can make a request as you posed as you.

Verify and filter requests and responses

Don't blindly trust the data returned by the API. Necessary verification should be done whether it is structure or content. For example, if it is expected to be in JSON format, confirm whether Content-Type is correct; if the field should be a number, reject string type data.

  • After receiving the response, first check whether the status code is 200 series, and then further analyze the content.
  • XSS filtering is required for content that may contain user input (such as comments, nicknames, etc.).
  • Set a reasonable timeout time to avoid the entire system being paralyzed due to a certain external service being stuck.

For example: If you are calling the weather API but the returned data contains HTML or script tags, be careful if someone forged the response content.

Control the frequency of call to prevent abuse and DDoS

Frequent calls to external APIs may not only trigger the opponent's current limit mechanism, but may also become one of the attack paths. You can alleviate this problem by local current limit.

  • Use the token bucket or leak bucket algorithm to control the number of requests issued per unit time.
  • Record the API usage of each user and promptly alert when abnormal traffic is found.
  • For high concurrency scenarios, duplicate requests can be reduced in combination with caching strategies.

Some large platforms will set very low current limit thresholds for unauthorized requests, and if you do not pay attention to the control frequency, you may be temporarily banned from IP.


Basically that's it. It is not complicated to call external APIs safely, but many details are easily overlooked, especially when handling errors and exceptions.

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