How to maintain continuous Google Calendar integration without repeated user authentication

Other Questions Google calendar
1

I’m building an app with a calendar feature where users can manage their events. I want to create a two-way sync with Google Calendar so users can both send events to Google and receive updates from their Google calendar.

For receiving events from Google Calendar, I discovered that webhooks work great. I can make one API call with the user’s authorization token and then my app gets notifications whenever their Google calendar changes. This happens automatically without asking the user to log in again.

The problem is with sending events to Google Calendar. Every solution I’ve tried requires the user to authenticate again each time they want to create an event. This creates a really frustrating experience because users have to keep logging in over and over.

Does anyone know a better approach to handle outgoing calendar events that doesn’t require constant re-authentication? I’m looking for something similar to how the webhook solution works for incoming events.

2

This happens because you’re not handling OAuth tokens right. Google gives you two tokens when users first authenticate - an access token (expires in an hour) and a refresh token (lasts much longer). You need to add access_type=offline to your authorization URL so you get that refresh token. Store it in your database with the user’s info. Then set up automatic refresh - when you get a 401 error, use the refresh token to grab a new access token and try again. I’ve been running something similar for two years and users only authenticate once during setup. It’s all about solid token management on your end.