axios-auth-refresh

Library that helps you implement automatic refresh of authorization via axios interceptors. You can easily intercept the original request when it fails, refresh the authorization and continue with the original request, without any user interaction.

What happens when the request fails due to authorization is all up to you. You can either run a refresh call for a new authorization token or run a custom logic.

The plugin stalls additional requests that have come in while waiting for a new authorization token and resolves them when a new token is available.

Installation

Using npm or yarn:

npm install axios-auth-refresh --save
# or
yarn add axios-auth-refresh

Syntax

createAuthRefreshInterceptor(
    axios: AxiosInstance,
    refreshAuthLogic: (failedRequest: any) => Promise<any>,
    options: AxiosAuthRefreshOptions = {}
): number;

Parameters

• axios - an instance of Axios
• refreshAuthLogic - a Function used for refreshing authorization (must return a promise). Accepts exactly one parameter, which is the failedRequest returned by the original call.
• options - object with settings for interceptor (See available options)

Returns

Interceptor id in case you want to reject it manually.

Usage

In order to activate the interceptors, you need to import a function from axios-auth-refresh which is exported by default and call it with the axios instance you want the interceptors for, as well as the refresh authorization function where you need to write the logic for refreshing the authorization.

The interceptors will then be bound onto the axios instance, and the specified logic will be run whenever a 401 (Unauthorized) status code is returned from a server (or any other status code you provide in options). All the new requests created while the refreshAuthLogic has been processing will be bound onto the Promise returned from the refreshAuthLogic function. This means that the requests will be resolved when a new access token has been fetched or when the refreshing logic failed.

import axios from 'axios';
import createAuthRefreshInterceptor from 'axios-auth-refresh';

// Function that will be called to refresh authorization
const refreshAuthLogic = failedRequest => axios.post('https://www.example.com/auth/token/refresh').then(tokenRefreshResponse => {
    localStorage.setItem('token', tokenRefreshResponse.data.token);
    failedRequest.response.config.headers['Authorization'] = 'Bearer ' + tokenRefreshResponse.data.token;
    return Promise.resolve();
});

// Instantiate the interceptor (you can chain it as it returns the axios instance)
createAuthRefreshInterceptor(axios, refreshAuthLogic);

// Make a call. If it returns a 401 error, the refreshAuthLogic will be run, 
// and the request retried with the new token
axios.get('https://www.example.com/restricted/area')
    .then(/* ... */)
    .catch(/* ... */);

Skipping the interceptor

⚠️ Because of the bug axios#2295 v0.19.0 is not supported. ⚠️

✅ This has been fixed and will be released in axios v0.19.1

There's a possibility to skip the logic of the interceptor for specific calls. To do this, you need to pass the skipAuthRefresh option to the request config for each request you don't want to intercept.

axios.get('https://www.example.com/', { skipAuthRefresh: true });

If you're using TypeScript you can import the custom request config interface from axios-auth-refresh.

import { AxiosAuthRefreshRequestConfig } from 'axios-auth-refresh';

Request interceptor

Since this plugin automatically stalls additional requests while refreshing the token, it is a good idea to wrap your request logic in a function, to make sure the stalled requests are using the newly fetched data (like token).

Example of sending the tokens:

// Obtain the fresh token each time the function is called
function getAccessToken(){
    return localStorage.getItem('token');
}

// Use interceptor to inject the token to requests
axios.interceptors.request.use(request => {
    request.headers['Authorization'] = `Bearer ${getAccessToken()}`;
    return request;
});

Available options

Status codes to intercept

You can specify multiple status codes that you want the interceptor to run for.

{
    statusCodes: [ 401, 403 ] // default: [ 401 ]
}

Retry instance for stalled requests

You can specify the instance which will be used for retrying the stalled requests. Default value is undefined and the instance passed to createAuthRefreshInterceptor function is used.

{
    retryInstance: someAxiosInstance // default: undefined
}

onRetry callback before sending the stalled requests

You can specify the onRetry callback which will be called before each stalled request is called with the request configuration object.

{
    onRetry: (requestConfig) => ({ ...requestConfig, baseURL: '' }) // default: undefined
}

Pause the instance while "refresh logic" is running

While your refresh logic is running, the interceptor will be triggered for every request which returns one of the options.statusCodes specified (HTTP 401 by default).

In order to prevent the interceptors loop (when your refresh logic fails with any of the status codes specified in options.statusCodes) you need to use a skipAuthRefresh flag on your refreshing call inside the refreshAuthLogic function.

In case your refresh logic does not make any calls, you should consider using the following flag when initializing the interceptor to pause the whole axios instance while the refreshing is pending. This prevents interceptor from running for each failed request.

{
    pauseInstanceWhileRefreshing: true // default: false
}

Intercept on network error

Some CORS APIs may not return CORS response headers when an HTTP 401 Unauthorized response is returned. In this scenario, the browser won't be able to read the response headers to determine the response status code.

To intercept any network error, enable the interceptNetworkError option.

CAUTION: This should be used as a last resort. If this is used to work around an API that doesn't support CORS with an HTTP 401 response, your retry logic can test for network connectivity attempting refresh authentication.

{
    interceptNetworkError: true // default: undefined
}

Other usages of the library

This library has also been used for:

• Automatic request throttling by @amcsi
• OTP challenges with Google2FA by @LeoniePhiline

have you used it for something else? Create a PR with your use case to share it.

Changelog

• v3.1.0

  • axios v0.21.1 support
  • interceptNetworkError option introduced. See #133.

• v3.0.0

  • skipWhileRefresh flag has been deprecated due to its unclear name and its logic has been moved to pauseInstanceWhileRefreshing flag
  • pauseInstanceWhileRefreshing is set to false by default

Want to help?

Check out contribution guide or my patreon page!

Special thanks to JetBrains for providing the IDE for our library