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Forum Discussion
FrustratedUser3
4 years agoCollaborator | Level 8
Oauth2 refresh token question - what happens when the refresh token expires?
I've been testing the Dropbox OAuth2 endpoints for a few days and I have read the documentation provided directly by Dropbox. However, it is not clear to me how I'm supposed to handle the acquisition...
- 4 years ago
While Dropbox "short-lived access tokens" do expire automatically, "refresh tokens" do not. When your app gets a refresh token, it can use that to continuously get new short-lived access tokens whenever needed, without further manual user intervention. (The Python SDK actually does that for you automatically.)
So, since Dropbox refresh tokens do not expire automatically they can and should be re-used repeatedly. The app will not receive a new refresh token every time it requests a new short-lived access token. It should just store and continue re-using the same one.
They can be revoked manually though, either by the user (e.g., via https://www.dropbox.com/account/connected_apps ) or the app, at which point the app would need to prompt the user to re-authorize the app if they wish to use it again.
Greg-DB
Dropbox Staff
While Dropbox "short-lived access tokens" do expire automatically, "refresh tokens" do not. When your app gets a refresh token, it can use that to continuously get new short-lived access tokens whenever needed, without further manual user intervention. (The Python SDK actually does that for you automatically.)
So, since Dropbox refresh tokens do not expire automatically they can and should be re-used repeatedly. The app will not receive a new refresh token every time it requests a new short-lived access token. It should just store and continue re-using the same one.
They can be revoked manually though, either by the user (e.g., via https://www.dropbox.com/account/connected_apps ) or the app, at which point the app would need to prompt the user to re-authorize the app if they wish to use it again.
FrustratedUser3
4 years agoCollaborator | Level 8
Thanks for the response. Just to be sure I'm understanding:
- I need to store the refresh token from the original authentication call.
- When the access token expires, the original refresh token can be used to generate a new access token.
Is that correct? Also, what happens if you lose the refresh token? It doesn't make a lot of sense to force the user to authenticate via URL a second time, but that's the only way I know how to get a new access token without a refresh token using any of the flows. Am I missing something or is that right?
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