"Token Tango: Navigating Access and Refresh Tokens in Authentication"

Refresh tokens and access tokens are both important concepts in authentication and authorization protocols, particularly in the context of web applications and APIs. Let me provide a brief explanation for beginners about what these actually are:

• Let's suppose you are logging in to a website. We will generate access and refresh tokens to grant you access. Later, if you visit the same website again after a few hours, in web application authentication, we don't go through the same login process of entering the password repeatedly. Instead, we simply match your cookie's refresh token with the refresh token in our database for the same user. Then, we generate an access token for the user without the need for a password, ensuring a seamless experience.

Access Token :

• An access token is a credential we generate to grant access to protected resources by the user, for the user.

• An access token is a short-lived token that grants you access to the website. It typically expires after a few minutes or hours and is automatically deleted.

Refresh Token :

• A refresh token is a credential used to generate a new access token once the previous access token expires, as long as the user has access to the refresh token generated initially.

• Refresh tokens are long-lived and are stored in the database for further use. They are usually valid for days, weeks, or months.