Adding the user model

You have successfully created a REST API powered by the Cloudinary image hosting and processing power and, following a similar procedure, you could easily integrate other third-party services into your API, making your application more complex and powerful.

Without authentication, however, it would be very risky to deploy even the simplest API online. For instance, a malicious user (or even a kid willing to pull some pranks) could easily “bomb” your API with images that you wouldn’t want displayed and in quantities that would quickly fill your free quota. Therefore, before committing your API to GitHub and deploying it—in this case, to Render.com—you will add a user model and a JWT-based authentication scheme very similar to the one shown in Chapter 6, Authentication and Authorization.

In the following section, you will create a simple user model and allow users to log in to the application, in order to perform some operations...