How to Design a Lightweight API Key System for Service-to-Service Auth

A software engineering post on DEV Community outlines a minimal API key design for service-to-service authentication, using a single six-column database table instead of heavyweight solutions like OAuth2. The approach stores a SHA-256 hash of each key rather than the key itself, preventing full credential exposure if the database is ever compromised or accidentally dumped. Revocation is handled by recording a timestamp in the database and filtering it at the query level, avoiding logic scattered across application code. The design intentionally omits features such as scopes, caching, a CLI key-issuing tool, and expiry columns, with clear signals identified for when each should be added later. For teams with only one to three stable consumers, the author suggests an even simpler alternative: storing hashes in environment variables and loading them into memory at boot time.