Unconventional Secure and Asynchronous RESTful APIs using SSH
Some time ago, in a desperate search for asynchronicity, I came across a Python package that changed the way I look at remote interfaces: AsyncSSH.
Reading through their documentation and example code, you’ll find an interesting assortment of use cases. All of which take advantage of the authentication and encryption capabilities of SSH, while using Python’s asyncio to handle asynchronous communications.
Thinking about various applications I’ve developed over the years, many included functions that could benefit from decoupling into separate services. But at times, I would avoid it due to security implications.
I wanted to build informative dashboards that optimize maintenance tasks. But they bypassed business logic, so I wouldn’t dare expose them over the same interfaces. I even looked at using HTTPS client certs, but support from REST frameworks seemed limited.
I realized that asyncssh could provide the extra security I was looking for over a well known key-based system. And in my never-ending quest to find what makes things tick, I decided to take a stab at writing a REST-ish service over SSH.
A great way to familiarize myself with the library and the protocol, it helped me learn more about building asynchronous apps, creating a small framework called korv.
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