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Forum Discussion
pwnell
4 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Oauth2 code short lived- how to implement correctly from B2B?
I am rewriting the old authorization code of my Windows service that communicates with Dropbox on behalf of a single, fixed user account. I have hit a snag. Usually I use the client credentials grant...
- 4 years ago
The updated Dropbox app authorization flow does now use short-lived access tokens and refresh tokens. In either implementation, the initial authorization does require some manual user interaction.
With the new functionality, if you need long-term access (that is, longer than four hours) without further manual interaction after the initial authorization, you should request "offline" access. That way, during the initial authorization your app will receive both a short-lived access token as well as a refresh token.
Then, when the current short-lived access token has expired, the app should use the refresh token to request a new short-lived access token, by calling /oauth2/token with 'grant_type=refresh_token'. This step can be done entirely programmatically, without additional manual user interaction.
You can find more information in the following resources:
pwnell
Explorer | Level 4
That is what I did. However usually the refresh token is also short lived. You are saying I should persist the refresh token and use it even if my service restarts, to fetch a new auth token?
Greg-DB
4 years agoDropbox Staff
Yes, you should store and re-use the refresh token repeatedly. (Dropbox refresh tokens are not short-lived; they do not expire by themselves, though they can be revoked on demand by the user or app.)
- pwnell4 years agoExplorer | Level 4
Seems like I spoke too soon. It worked for a week or two but now the refresh token expired and I had to do the manual get token, then get refresh token, add to my code, restart the service routing which is just not cool.
I got HTTP Status code Unauthorized back after the refresh token worked fine for a while.
- Greg-DB4 years agoDropbox Staff
Dropbox OAuth 2 refresh tokens don't expire by themselves, but there are a number of ways they can become invalid. For example:
- the user or team admin can revoke all access/refresh tokens for an app by unlinking it on any of the following Dropbox web pages:
- the Connected apps page
- the Security checkup page
- the Team apps page on the Settings section of Business Admin console
- the team member’s page on the Members section of the Business Admin console
- any client with the access token can revoke the access token and corresponding refresh token by calling /2/auth/token/revoke
- the GitHub-Dropbox token scanning partnership can revoke access/refresh tokens found publicly posted on GitHub
- if the app uses the "app folder" permission, the access/refresh token can effectively be disabled by deleting the app folder itself in the Dropbox account, via the Dropbox website or any client
- the app can be disabled
- the account that owns the app can be disabled
- the connected account can be disabled
If something isn't working as expected though, please feel free to share the details (e.g., the steps and code to reproduce the issue, and the unexpected error/output) so we can look into it.
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