What is the use of guest_token in spree or rails while using Devise

Question

I am using spree to build my e-commerce application .It uses Devise gem for authentication. Every time an order is created a random guest_token is associated with it .In my application I used a functionality where I associate order with email while doing a guest checkout, which already has guest_token.The main Problem is once the order is completed the guest_token is carried away further i.e if another user logs in then that completed order is associated with user as his guest_token and the completed order guest_token are same.This doesn't happen if user signs in and then places order.What am I doing wrong here? Why does Devise generate a guest_token and associate it with order in spree?How to get rid of this?

Answer 1

This is stated in the documentation here https://guides.spreecommerce.com/api/orders.html with following say:

The order_token parameter will work for authorizing any action for an order within Spree’s API.

*Note: order_token == guest_token

Having this token then allows us to use this API request which gets the detail of order where:

http://domainname.com/store/api/orders/R744620229?order_token=deMRSmjCxc5C1cwlkT6-Ow

• ‘R000000000’ => Order Number
• 'XXXXSmjCxc5C1cwlkT6-Ow’ => Guest Token of order (also referred as order_token)

We'll also need to add this line Spree::Api::Config[:requires_authentication] = false in config/initializers/spree.rb to have the API functioning.