Expire sessions after n hours in Webchats with persistent history

If the Webchat conversation should be persistent across page navigations or page reloads, one can implement the Persistent History decribed on Github: https://github.com/Cognigy/WebchatWidget/blob/master/docs/persistent-history.md. However, in this scenario, the session never ends for the Webchat user as the messages stay in the chat window.

If the session should expire after a configured time, one can use the following extension of the Persistent History Code:

// Initialize a sessionId, undefined by default.
let sessionId;
let sessionStartDate;

// in case LocalStorage is supported...
if (window.localStorage) {
  sessionStartDate = new Date(
    window.localStorage.getItem("SESSIONSTARTDATE")
  );

  let currentDate = new Date();

  // calculate session time in hours
 let hours = Math.abs(sessionStartDate - currentDate) / 36e5;

 // check if session is outdated
 // Expire after 48 hours
 if (hours >= 48) {
   window.localStorage.removeItem("SESSIONID");
   window.localStorage.removeItem("SESSIONSTARTDATE");
 } else {

   // try to load a previously stored sessionId from the LocalStorage
   sessionId = window.localStorage.getItem("SESSIONID");
 }

  // in case there was no previously stored sessionId,
  // generate one and store it into LocalStorage
  if (!sessionId) {
    sessionId = "session-" + Date.now() * Math.random();
    sessionStartDate = new Date();
    localStorage.setItem("SESSIONSTARTDATE", sessionStartDate);
    localStorage.setItem("SESSIONID", sessionId);
  }
}

initWebchat("...", { sessionId: sessionId }).then(function (webchat) {
  webchat.open();
});

Expire sessions after n hours in Webchats with persistent history

Webchat

Comments