Multiple tabs trying to refresh token at once

[tejaswini-developer]

When application is opened in multiple tabs and auth token is expired, all the tabs are trying to fetch new set of tokens using refresh token at once. And one of the tab is succeeding, to fetch new active auth token, which will invalidate previous refresh token and fetch new refresh token. Since the pervious refresh token is not valid any more, other tabs are failing to refresh tokens. With this issue, user have to refresh the sessions in middle of their work.

If there is way to pause other tabs refresh while one tab is refreshing that would be help to resolve the issue.

Would really appreciate if anyone suggest a way resolve this issue.

[sebastianvitterso]

Hi, @tejaswini-developer! We looked into this a year or two ago, and we couldn't find any solution that didn't break other parts of the application, except one issue-mitigation:

"Random stagger" (code in repo). Basically it should ensure that the token is refreshed at a random time for each of the tabs. Also, because refreshAccessToken checks whether refreshInProgress is true (which will be set in any other tab performing a refresh), the chance of this refresh colliding should be a lot lower (but naturally, not zero, given the randomness).

So we do have some logic checking that two tabs shouldn't update at the same time, but it might be a bit inconsistent.

Does this issue happen often for you, or just often enough that it stops the library from being useful?

[tejaswini-developer]

Hi @sebastianvitterso, Thank you for the quick response. Yes, out of four tabs, at least three tabs are initiating token refresh at almost same time with milliseconds difference, every time token needs to be refreshed (auth token is valid for 2 hours). Our users access application in multiple tabs in their day to day activities, to perform faster business operations. They are facing token refresh failure almost every time.

Seems like, because of the requests being initiated at almost same time this check for other tab refresh is not working.

[soofstad]

Just to be sure. Which version of the library are used on the clients? 🙂