How-to check if a Boundary session token is still valid

Introduction

There may be cases, where customers would need to verify if the Boundary session token is still valid and proceed with their workflows, or instead - execute boundary authenticate again.

Boundary has a built-in command that we can use:

boundary config get-token

Prerequisites

1. Boundary

2. Reference to the exit code statuses:

For the shell’s purposes, a command which exits with a zero exit status has succeeded.
A non-zero exit status indicates failure.

3. "echo $?"- a command that will print the exit status of the most recently executed foreground pipeline

Procedure

When a user or a client executes:

boundary config get-token

it can either display the token and exit with a status code zero (success):

❯ boundary config get-token
at_kxuoyp26Q5_s18pBCkkVTuL73e1C...qxHNE

❯ echo $?
0

or display an error message and exit with a status code of non-zero: 

❯ boundary config get-token
No token could be discovered

❯ echo $?
2

Additional Information

Using both boundary config get-token and the exit codes, we can build a simple verification shell script:

#!/bin/bash
boundary config get-token 2> /dev/null

if [ $? -eq 0 ]
then
echo "Boundary session token was discovered."
exit 0
else
echo "No token could be discovered"
boundary authenticate
exit 1
fi

For additional questions or support, please open a Support ticket.