Serving nonces through AJAX is not refreshing nonce, returning 403 error

Question

I have run into an issue with nonces becoming invalid, and being unable to refresh to a new nonce. In my example I have a Facebook Connect button, and a Facebook Disconnect button, each with their own nonce.

Once either one of these button is pressed, an AJAX call is made, and the other button is sent through AJAX and displayed on the page instead.

For sake of the example, we're starting with the Facebook Connect button.

<button type="button" id="facebook-connect-button" class="facebook-button" data-nonce="<?php echo wp_create_nonce('ns-social-facebook-authentication'); ?>">
    <?php _e('Connect to', NS_USER_SYSTEM_TEXTDOMAIN); ?> Facebook
</button>

After this button is pressed, an AJAX call is made, which verifies the data-nonce property like so:

check_ajax_referer( 'ns-social-facebook-authentication', '_nonce' );

No problems here, this works perfectly and my hooked function is working perfectly.

After this function has ran, it returns the Facebook Disconnect button that looks like this, and replaces the original button.

<button type="button" id="facebook-disconnect-button" class="facebook-disconnect-button" data-nonce="<?php echo wp_create_nonce('ns-social-facebook-disconnect'); ?>">
    <?php _e('Disconnect from Facebook', NS_USER_SYSTEM_TEXTDOMAIN); ?>
</button>

After pressing this button, everything works fine like before, and this time, the Facebook Connect button is called again though AJAX. Now here's when the issue starts.

This new returned button contains the same nonce, which is now invalid and returns a 403 error, since it's already been used before.

It looks like returning the button through AJAX does not refresh the nonce, even though it's already been used.

I have also tried displaying both buttons on the page, and returning just a new nonce with AJAX every time a button is clicked, but still, it keeps returning the same nonce for each of the buttons respectively.

Why is this happening and how can I fix this issue?

Answer 1

You could just force a reload after a user toggles the connect button in again.

Of course it's not the nicest UX anymore and i guess it doesn't fits in your plan.

Answer 2

I found out the source of my issue. In the logic for my function, I was calling another function in which I was re-logging the user. This caused the user-specific nonces to become invalid.

After removing this logic everything works as expected!