How to refresh token in apollo if onError can't return a promise?

this suggests

onError(({ graphQLErrors, networkError, operation, forward }) => {
    if (graphQLErrors) {
      for (let err of graphQLErrors) {
        switch (err.extensions.code) {
          case 'UNAUTHENTICATED':
            // error code is set to UNAUTHENTICATED
            // when AuthenticationError thrown in resolver

            // modify the operation context with a new token
            const oldHeaders = operation.getContext().headers;
            operation.setContext({
              headers: {
                ...oldHeaders,
                authorization: getNewToken(),
              },
            });
            // retry the request, returning the new observable
            return forward(operation);
        }
      }
    }
    if (networkError) {
      console.log(`[Network error]: ${networkError}`);
      // if you would also like to retry automatically on
      // network errors, we recommend that you use
      // apollo-link-retry
    }
  }
);

but in most cases getNewToken is going to be a fetch() call and you want to do

await getNewToken

but you can’t return a promise… so you can’t do this

onError(async ({ graphQLErrors, networkError, operation, forward }) => {
    if (graphQLErrors) {
      for (let err of graphQLErrors) {
        switch (err.extensions.code) {
          case 'UNAUTHENTICATED':
            // error code is set to UNAUTHENTICATED
            // when AuthenticationError thrown in resolver

            // modify the operation context with a new token
            const oldHeaders = operation.getContext().headers;
            operation.setContext({
              headers: {
                ...oldHeaders,
                authorization: await getNewToken(),
              },
            });
            // retry the request, returning the new observable
            return forward(operation);
        }
      }
    }
    if (networkError) {
      console.log(`[Network error]: ${networkError}`);
      // if you would also like to retry automatically on
      // network errors, we recommend that you use
      // apollo-link-retry
    }
  }
);

Are people using onError for the refreshing?

This guy (article below) suggests an alternative strategy but it feels like onError is the right place to do it… if it’s not maybe we should update the apollo docs with the best practice here?

related issue: