Feature Request: Expose a method to programmatically signal user activity (Custom Activity Trigger)

[porshkevich]

Description

Currently, oidc-spa automatically detects user activity based on native peripheral events (like mouse and keyboard actions) to manage the idle timeout.

However, there are common scenarios where a user is actively using the application without physical interaction for extended periods (5-10 minutes). The most prominent examples are:

• Video Conferences / Webinars: Users are actively engaged in a call but don't touch the mouse or keyboard.
• Media Playback: Users are watching embedded training videos or presentations.

In these cases, the library triggers a false-positive idle timeout and logs the user out mid-session. To make the idle tracking more flexible, it would be highly beneficial to have a way to manually tell the library that the user is still active.

Proposed Solution

Expose a method in the oidc instance API (for example, oidc.signalActivity()) that developers can call programmatically from their application logic (e.g., inside a WebRTC session or media player event loop).

When called, this method should reset the internal idle timeout timer exactly as a mouse movement or keypress currently does.

Thank you for this amazing library!

[garronej]

Oh yes, that's a big oversight on my end.
I will address it shortly.
Your proposed solution seems more than reasonable.

[garronej]

Hello @porshkevich,

You can implement this with:

src/oidc.ts

export function signalUserActivity(){
    document.dispatchEvent(new Event("mousemove"));
}

Alternatively I could expose a function like:

const { startAssumingUserActivelyEngagingWithApp } from "oidc-spa/core";

const { endAssumingUserActivelyEngagingWithApp } = startAssumingUserActivelyEngagingWithApp();

onStreamend(()=> {
    endAssumingUserActivelyEngagingWithApp();
});

But I don't know it's maybe not the best API design... and it would need to be documented. What do you think?