Hi folks👋! In this post I want to share something I wish I had when I started building APIs with Ruby on Rails: a practical guide that takes security seriously from the beginning. When I built my first REST API, most tutorials I found were focused on getting something running quickly. They were great for learning the basics, but they usually skipped important topics like API versioning, authentication strategy, authorization, and security. Even when using AI tools to generate a “secure API”, the result is often still insecure unless you already understand the threats you are trying to protect against. Security is not something you get automatically. You need to know what problems you are solving and why the protections matter. I ended up reading API design books, OWASP documentation, and real-world breach reports before I finally felt like I understood what I was building, I've put all in practice. This post is the guide I wish I had back then.…