Executive Summary: Implementing Laravel Sanctum, Rate Limiting, and CORS properly for production APIs.
APIs are the backbone of modern SaaS, but they are also the primary attack vector.
### API Authentication with Sanctum
Laravel Sanctum provides a lightweight authentication system for SPAs and simple APIs. For API tokens, always use hashed tokens in the database, which Sanctum handles automatically.
### Rate Limiting
Always protect public endpoints (like login or webhook ingestion) with rate limits in `RouteServiceProvider`:
```php
RateLimiter::for('api', function (Request $request) {
return Limit::perMinute(60)->by($request->user()?->id ?: $request->ip());
});
```
This prevents brute-force attacks and abuse of your server resources.