FAQs

Q1. My app is re-loading every time adal renews a token.

Adal uses iframes to renew tokens silently in the background. AAD returns the token back to the redirect_uri specified in the token request (this redirect_uri must be registered with AAD). Since the response is a 302, it results in the html corresponding to the redirect_uri getting loaded in the iframe. Usually, it's the app's root/default page. This causes an app's reload. In other cases, if the app's root page requires authentication, it might lead to nested iframes or xframe deny error. Since, adal cannot cancel the 302 issued by AAD, it cannot prevent the redirect_uri from getting loaded in the iframe. But, there are workarounds for this that one can use to avoid the entire app reloading again or other errors caused because of this:

• Specify a different html for the iframe:

  Set redirect_uri property on config to a simple page, that does not require authentication. You have to make sure that it matches with the redirect_uri registered in AAD portal. This will not affect user's login experience as Adal saves the start page when user begins the login process and redirects back to the exact location after login is completed.

  Please look at the gist for an example of template html you can use. You will need to make some modifications to the html for it to work with your specific app: https://gist.github.com/tushargupta51/5fa6d000357120adbc8fd1d5c68853c4

• Conditional initialization in your main app.js file: If your app is structured similar to our sample single-page app where there is one central Javascript file (app.js in the sample) that defines the app's initialization, routing and other stuff, you can use an if...else based on whether the app is loading in an iframe or not. Something like this: https://gist.github.com/tushargupta51/78ce0b6bce998f6851abd02d91eb3a95

Q3. My app gets into an infinite loop, sometimes leading to digest iterations error.

There could be multiple reasons for the infinite loop. I am detailing below the known causes:

• If using ui-router: Most common cause of running into infinite loops when using ui-router is state transition error. The root causes are documented here #2238(summary version) and #600. One-line explanation of this is missing state definition for root page "/". Add this to your state provider routing:

     $stateProvider.state("/", {
            url: "/",
            templateUrl: <could be home page or default page",
            requireADLogin: true,
        });

• Nested iframe creation: if an iframe is creating another iframe, this could lead to a loop where adal keeps sending token renewal requests. Please see this answer for more details.
• Hash reset: Adal used to do reset the hash in the response sent from AAD in the locationChangeStart event. This sometimes was leading to multiple location change events and also app reload at times. This hash reset was removed in 1.0.11. Please use this version if none of the above solutions work for you.

Q2. Adal goes into infinite loop when renewing token and create nested iframes.

The root cause for this is same as Q1. Please try one of the solutions suggested in the answer.

Q3. I get this error "Refused to display ... in a frame because it set 'X-Frame-Options' to 'DENY'.

The root cause for this is same as Q1. Please try one of the solutions suggested in the answer.