Securing a FastAPI Server with WorkOS AuthKit

FastAPI is a popular Python framework for building APIs due to its speed, async capabilities, and automatic documentation generation, but securing these APIs with a reliable authentication layer can be challenging. The text outlines how to use WorkOS, a purpose-built identity platform, to handle authentication tasks such as JWT handling, session management, and secure cookie storage, thus allowing developers to focus on business logic rather than building an auth system from scratch. The tutorial guides readers through setting up a FastAPI project, integrating it with WorkOS AuthKit, and implementing session-based authentication to protect API endpoints, using an Expense Tracker API as an example. WorkOS simplifies the authentication process by managing sign-in UI, session tokens, cookie encryption, and supports additional scenarios like machine-to-machine authentication and enterprise SSO without requiring significant code changes.