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OAuth error monitoring notification

Pathfix OAuth platform is a 100% managed auth solution for your user-facing integration needs. A no-code developer tool, it allows you complete control and transparency to what you offer to your users.

Setting up an integration is done in less than 5 minutes and is broken into 2 steps:

  1. Authorization from your user
  2. Making the API call to the provider

The authorization process is where the user clicks to connect your app with their provider. Once authorized, you can make the API call through Pathfix to the provider, where Pathfix handles the tokens and makes sure your app is authorized to make that API call.

To help you keep better track of your API calls, we have enabled Error Email Notifications that are sent everytime there is an error with your calls. This is enabled by default for all our customers.

This document details what are the possible errors you may see, what each of them could mean and how you could go about fixing this.

Error Breakdown

API calls may fail for a varied number of reasons, these could be from an incorrect oauth configuration to invalid call structured. These are the errors that you may get when making the API call:

INVALID-OAUTHID

For every API call made to a provider, you need to pass the connected users unique ID associated in your app database. This could be an alphanumeric ID, email ID etc. – any unique ID that helps identify your user in your database.

If you get notified of an invalid-oauthid error, check the ID that is being passed over for the user and make sure that the user has authorized your app to make the API call. Most often, we see that the API call is being made for a user that has not authenticated your app. Check your API call structure to make sure you are only making API calls to the provider ONLY once the user has connected.

API_ERROR

If you get notified of an API-error, that means your API has not been processed by the provider due to an error. This type of error would require you to diagnose the error to understand the reason.

To get more details into the error, log in to your Pathfix OAuth account:

  • Select your Application and click on Activity from the left navigation
  • Search for the API call and click to view more detailed Response received from the provider

You will be able to see the exact response sent over by the provider which would give you insights on why the API call was rejected.

API_error would happen for a number of reasons, these could be:

  • Incorrectly formed json request where the json has not been configured according to what the provider needs. We recommend re-checking your json call structure and trying again
  • Missing information. The provider may need additional information to proces the API that has not been included in the call.
  • Missing Scopes. Check what are the scopes that the provider needs in order to process the call. If the scope is not listed in your provider configuration in Pathfix, click on Edit under the configuration, add the required scope, re-connect an account and try the call again

The above list is not exhaustive as each provider may have different reasons for failure. We recommend reading through the providers API documentation to understand this better. Additionally, we recommend running the API call in the Pathfix API Playground before configuring this in your app. You can access the API Playground by clicking on Test Connection under the provider configuration in your Pathfix OAuth account.

Action Required

If you receive any of these error notifications, you must take action immediately.

Provider apps: If there are multiple errors being received against your application, some providers may choose to put your account on hold or deactivate your developer app. Log in to your app and action them on priority.

Pathfix account: If the error count against your account goes over 80 per hour, our system will temporarily block your app until the errors have been resolved. This allows you to take action internally first without it effecting your provider’s developer apps.

If you need any assistance with understanding the API error you are seeing, you can reach out to our support team by sending an email to support@pathfix.com or chat with us directly from your dashboard. We’d be happy to look into it!