When you work with third-party services or external APIs (like weather services, payment gateways, or any other external data source), they often provide you with an API key or some form of authentication. This key is sensitive information—like a password—that allows access to the service.
If you’re fetching data directly from the client side (for instance, a React or Vue application running in the user's browser), you would need to expose this API key to make calls to the third-party service. However, if this key is visible in the client code, anyone who views your client-side code could potentially see and misuse it.
To protect this sensitive information, it’s best practice to create a server-side API layer. This means: