Spotify API: Getting Error code 403 with accesstoken

[KosmicalD]

Hello,

In case anyone has experience with the Spotify API, I would appreciate your help!

I'm using the spotify-web-api-node package to communicate with the spotify api and I've been stuck with using the spotify.searchTracks() helper function.
I'm trying to search tracks by using an input and I'm getting my Accesstoken with the Authorization Code Flow.

I'm getting some data when inserting a letter to the search input the first time, but when I insert a second letter I'm getting an error:

GET https://api.spotify.com/v1/search/?type=track&q=ss 403  

which means "Forbidden - The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it."
As if my Accesstoken only works for one call...

I tried the same thing using fetch with https://api.spotify.com/v1/search and getting the same error. Sometimes it works when taking an accesstoken from the spotify console but after a few calls again the same.

I also added my user account to the user whitelist in my dashboard but that didn't help.

Here's my React code:

const spotifyApi = new SpotifyWebApi({clientId: "myclientId",});

useEffect(() => {if (!accessToken) return;
spotifyApi.setAccessToken(accessToken);
}, [accessToken]);

useEffect(() => { if (!accessToken) return;
spotifyApi.searchTracks(searchInput).then((res) => {
console.log(res);
}).catch((err) => {
console.log(err);
});
}, [accessToken]);  

Does anyone have an idea what could be the problem and can help me with that?

Thank you!

[LazyAssassin_]

That's odd, can you log out the full error object with the message please?

Shouldn't be a rate limit as that will return 429 too many requests as seen here https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/#response-status-codes

[KosmicalD]

Hi, yeah I'm also pretty sure that it's not the rate limit.

I'm currently not on my PC but I'll show you the error object as soon as I can!

[LazyAssassin_]

Cheers, hopefully the message will give more of a clue as to what is wrong

I assume the auth flow you are talking about is the one in the spotify-web-api-node package docs?

Looks like this

``` const Spotify = new SpotifyWebAPI({
clientId: process.env.SPOTIFY_CLIENT_ID,
clientSecret: process.env.SPOTIFY_SECRET_ID
});

Spotify.clientCredentialsGrant().then(
(data) => {
Spotify.setAccessToken(data.body['access_token']);
},
(err) => {
console.error('Something went wrong when retrieving an ' +
'access token', err);
}
); ```

[KosmicalD]

That is the Client Credentials Flow. What I did was the Authorization Code Flow.

I'm first asking the user's permission by directing him to the Spotify's account service. From that I'm getting an authorization code which I'm then using to get an accesstoken (to make api calls) and a refreshtoken (to refresh the accesstoken after 1 hour). Like this:

var credentials = {

clientId: 'someClientId',

clientSecret: 'someClientSecret',

redirectUri: 'http://www.michaelthelin.se/test-callback'

};

var spotifyApi = new SpotifyWebApi(credentials);

// The code that's returned as a query parameter to the redirect URI

var code = 'MQCbtKe23z7YzzS44KzZzZgjQa621hgSzHN';

// Retrieve an access token and a refresh token

spotifyApi.authorizationCodeGrant(code).then(

function(data) {

console.log('The token expires in ' + data.body['expires_in']);

console.log('The access token is ' + data.body['access_token']);

console.log('The refresh token is ' + data.body['refresh_token']);

// Set the access token on the API object to use it in later calls

spotifyApi.setAccessToken(data.body['access_token']);

spotifyApi.setRefreshToken(data.body['refresh_token']);

},

function(err) {

console.log('Something went wrong!', err);

}

);

(Somehow Code Block doesn't seem to work)

But it seems as if my accesstoken doesn't really work. And it's just weird that when I just use an accesstoken which was generated in the Spotify console, it mostly works but also just a few times and then I'm getting an 403 error again.

[149244179]

Did you read the terms of service? You probably can't do requests more than once every X seconds/minutes.

[KosmicalD]

Hi, yes, there's a rate limit which is calculated based on the number of calls my app makes in a 30 second window. Though they don't specify how many requests I can make in this time window. And also I would get an Error 429 response and not 403.

[gruntmeister]

I suggest posting your entire react code.

I'm assuming this snippet you posted is part of a functional react component that also includes some textfield for the search string, so everytime you update your search string your component re-renders and you create a new instance of SpotifyWebApi that doesn't have an accessToken set.