the application was rewritten a bit to be more testable

api/helpers.py

@@ -1,7 +1,19 @@
 # coding=UTF-8
+from flask import request, current_app, Response
 import unidecode
 import re
 
+def check_api_key():
+    api_keys = current_app.config.get("API_KEYS")
+    if not api_keys:
+        return
+    auth = request.authorization
+    if not auth or not auth.username in api_keys:
+        return Response(
+            'No valid API key provided', 401,
+            {'WWW-Authenticate': 'Basic realm="Login Required"'}
+        )
+
 
 def slugify(text):
     """Converts a string to a human-readable url"""