Optimizing Token Refreshing: Preventing Duplicate API Requests with Axios

Tanmay Thole
4 min readJun 19, 2023
Optimizing Token Refreshing

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In the realm of modern application development, secure authentication and authorization mechanisms are crucial for protecting user data and ensuring seamless user experiences. One such authentication method gaining popularity is JWT (JSON Web Tokens) token-based authentication. When implementing token-based authentication in application development, the access token assumes a vital role in accessing authorized APIs. Acting as a short-lived token, it serves to authenticate and authorize user requests for protected resources on the server. Access tokens have a limited lifespan, typically ranging from a few minutes to a few hours. Consequently, when the access token reaches its expiration, users are normally required to re-authenticate to obtain a fresh access token.

Here is where the refresh token comes into play. The refresh token is a long-lived token that is used to obtain a new access token without requiring the user to re-authenticate. When the access token expires, the client can send the refresh token to the server to request a new access token. The server verifies the refresh token and, if it is valid, issues a new access token, typically along with a new refresh token.

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Tanmay Thole

Full stack Developer 💻 | JavaScript ❤️ | Freelancer 👨🏾‍💻 | More https://tanmaythole.github.io/portfolio