Joomla Troubleshooter. Invalid Token error in joomla

Working with Joomla website you can see the Invalid Token error message. In this post we’ll describe the error and offer some way of solving it.

What are Tokens anyway ?

Tokens first made their way into Joomla with Joomla 1.5.3. They were introduced as a security feature for forms. For any form submitted on a Joomla website, a token was expected to be passed. If this was incorrect or missing, you’d get an Invalid Token error. This is really good as it thwarts Spam & hack attempts.

What’s affected ?

All forms in Joomla are affected by this. This error was more noticeable in the Login & Registration forms as these are the most used.

Why are we getting Invalid Token Errors ?

There are many reasons for you to get this error, and here’s a list of the most common ones:

Expired cookie: The cookie that Joomla expects you to have has expired. Deleting your cookies and trying to login again will fix the problem.

Caching:

1. Disable caching entirely. This is a two step process:
   
   1. Login to your Joomla control panel, go to Site, Global Configuration, System, and click on “No” next to Cache under Cache Settings and
   
   
   2. Disable the System cache plugin, by going to Extensions,Plugins, and then search for the System – Cache and click the checkbox next to it, and finally click on Disable on the top right.
   
   


2. Fix the code for the login (or the other feature you’re having problem with) yourself, by commenting out the check for the token.

In form file locate the following code:

<input type="hidden" name="<?php echo JUtility::getToken(); ?>" value="1" />

 

and replace it with

<?php echo JHTML::_( 'form.token' ); ?>

 

Using legacy mode (Joomla 1.0 mode): Using Joomla in Legacy mode is known to cause this problem. Just disable the legacy mode plugin.

Using legacy code for checking for tokens: Some versions of Joomla/Joomla templates feature some legacy code to check for tokens. This code needs to be changed. Here’s how to fix this problem:

• Open up the file /modules/mod_login/tmpl/default.php and change the line <?php JUtility::getToken(); ?> to <?php echo JHTML::_( ‘form.token’ ); ?>


• In many cases, the login module is overridden by the template, so you need to check the code in your template there to see if it’s using the JUtility::getToken(); and change it to the JHTML::_( ‘form.token’ );

Disabled cookies on browser: If cookies are disabled on your browser then you will definitely see this problem. Enabling cookies will fix it.

Joomla Troubleshooter. Invalid Token error in joomla