I’m building a web application that needs to allow different users to connect their own Spotify accounts and play music from their personal libraries. Right now I can get one Spotify account working with the playback SDK, but I’m stuck on how to handle multiple users with OAuth.
Each person who visits my site should be able to log in with their own Spotify credentials and access their own playlists and favorite tracks. The OAuth documentation is pretty confusing to me and I can’t figure out the right approach.
Has anyone implemented this kind of multi-user Spotify integration before? What’s the best way to handle the authentication flow so each user gets their own session?
For multiple users with Spotify OAuth, you need to securely store each user’s access and refresh tokens. When someone logs in through OAuth, grab their tokens and link them to their unique user ID in your database. This keeps everyone’s sessions separate. Don’t forget to set up token refreshing - Spotify’s access tokens die after an hour. Store the refresh tokens so you can grab new access tokens automatically without making users log in again. This keeps things private and follows standard auth practices.
Session management was what tripped me up at first. You’ve got to treat each Spotify user as their own separate entity in your app. I built a middleware layer that checks which user is making the request, then grabs their specific tokens from storage before calling the Spotify API. During OAuth callback, make sure you’re linking those returned tokens to the right user session - don’t just store them globally. Also handle cases where users revoke access from their Spotify settings. Build proper error handling for expired or invalid tokens. The Spotify Web API docs have solid examples once the flow clicks.