Managing Sessions

Sessions are an integral part of using the Vonage Client SDKs. A Session is a live communication stream between the Client SDK and the Vonage servers.

Creating a Session

To start making or receiving calls with the Vonage Client SDK you need to create a session. A prerequisite for creating a session is to have a User and a JWT for that User. You can learn more about Users and JWTs in the Create your Application guide. Once you have a User and associated JWT you can call the createSession function on the SDK. The examples in this guide will be in JavaScript but the function names are the same across all 3 platforms.

client.createSession(jwt)
 .then(sessionId => {
    console.log("Id of created session: ", sessionId);
 })
 .catch(error => {
    console.error("Error creating session: ", error);
 });

If successful, you will get a Session ID. This allows you to reconnect to this specific Session again if needed. Sessions have a TTL of 15 minutes.

Reconnecting a Session

If you want to reconnect to an existing session, the createSession function optionally takes a Session ID as a parameter.

client.createSession(jwt, existingSessionId)
 .then(sessionId => {
    console.log("Id of session: ", sessionId);
 })
 .catch(error => {
    console.error("Error: ", error);
 });

Troubleshooting Session Creation

If you cannot create a Session successfully the error message returned will give you some insight into the issue. Here are some general troubleshooting steps

1. Check the Vonage User exists by making a GET request to the Users API
2. If the User does exist, ensure that the User is in the same region that the Vonage Client SDK is attempting to connect to. The user._links object from the Users API call will have the User's region listed.
3. Enter your JWT into jwt.io to ensure that the JWT has the correct username on the sub claim and is not expired. Here you can also check that the ACL paths are correct and the object has the correct nesting.

Refreshing a Session

If you currently have an active session and know the JWT used to create the session will be expiring soon, you can refresh the session with a new JWT.

client.refreshSession(jwt)
 .then(() => {
    console.log("Session refreshed");
 })
 .catch(error => {
    console.error("Error refreshing session: ", error);
 });

Deleting a Session

You can also delete a session. You would do this as part of a logout flow for example.

client.deleteSession(jwt)
 .then(() => {
    console.log("Session deleted");
 })
 .catch(error => {
    console.error("Error deleting session: ", error);
 });

Have Questions?

Should you have any further questions, issues or feedback, please contact us at devrel@vonage.com or the Vonage Developer Community Slack.