968588 - Reuse tokens between syncs, assuming enough time remains before expiry

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Android Sync, defect, P5)

Description

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

This becomes especially viable if we extend the token validity period, at the risk of losing data in, e.g., a sent tab.

Comment 1

[Richard Newman [:rnewman]]

Let's do this, persisting in memory.

Comment 2

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

rfkelly: I see that tokens are by default valid for 300 units, which I infer to be seconds.  (This is not clear from http://docs.services.mozilla.com/token/apis.html, but that's a separate issue.)  Android may kill a sync after 5 minutes.  It's bad news to get killed midway through a sync; we definitely want to avoid that.  So we should only re-use a cached token if it's good for at least 5 more minutes.  The current 5 minute lifespan therefore makes this moot.  How would you feel about bumping the life of a token to a longer duration, say 15 or 20 minutes?  This will affect our token refresh story, but let's cross that bridge later.

Comment 3

[Ryan Kelly [:rfkelly]]

>  I see that tokens are by default valid for 300 units

Tokenserver should be issuing tokens valid for 3600 seconds; if not, then perhaps that config change has not rolled out to prod yet.  So yes, I feel pretty good about a longer token duration!

Comment 4

[:Grisha Kruglov]

This has value - less work to do for the client on each sync - but there are bigger fish to fry.

Comment 5

[Nick Alexander :nalexander [he/him]]

(In reply to :Grisha Kruglov from comment #4)
> This has value - less work to do for the client on each sync - but there are
> bigger fish to fry.

Counterpoint: it's been very helpful to know that Android Sync requests a fresh token from the token server every Sync.  Really simplifies arguing about what's happening as the ops side of Sync changes configurations, etc.

Counter-counterpoint: We do cache token server tokens on iOS, which has worked out okay.

Comment 6

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Re-triaging per https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1473195

Needinfo :susheel if you think this bug should be re-triaged.

Comment 7

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.