Issue with Database Access

[liuyanchen1015]

Hi,
I really love this tool, and it worked perfectly before. However, I found that when I switched to a different Notion account, it failed to find the database (I set the integration and connections correctly). Do you know what the problem might be?

[denkiwakame]

Hi @liuyanchen1015 ,

Hi, thanks for reaching out! Glad you like the tool 🫡
Just to make sure I understand your situation correctly:

1. You connected the database in Account A to this extension following the setup instructions.
2. Then you logged out of Account A and logged into Account B.
3. You tried to use the extension while logged into Account B.

If that’s the case, this behavior is expected.
For security reasons, the extension fetches the API key on demand through the account that’s currently logged in, instead of storing the API key directly in the browser or within the extension.

This design avoids the security risk of saving API keys locally, but it also means the extension can only work while you’re logged into the target Notion account.

If this doesn’t match your situation, please let me know.

[liuyanchen1015]

Thank you so much for your quick response!

1. I connected the database in Account A to this extension following the setup instructions, and it worked well.
   2)Then I logged out of Account A, logged into Account B, set up a new integration there, and updated the extension’s Notion Integration ID to Account B’s ID.
2. After that, I tried using the extension while logged into Account B. I assumed it should work, but it didn’t.

I also tried reinstalling the extension and redoing all the setup steps, but it still doesn’t work for some reason. I’d really appreciate any insights you might have into what could be causing this issue. Thank you so much!

[liuyanchen1015]

I just tried to log back into Account A and set the extension's Integration ID back to Account A's ID. It still works perfectly for Account A. But unfortunately, still doesn't work for Account B.

[denkiwakame]

@liuyanchen1015

Hi, thanks for the detailed explanation!

I tried reproducing the same setup, creating a new account (Account B) and using arxiv2notion — and it worked perfectly on my side.

So it’s possible that the integration hasn’t been properly connected to the database in Account B.
Could you please double-check that the integration has been added to the database’s Connections section?

👉 Step 3 — Create databases in Notion

Alternatively, you can investigate the issue locally by installing the debug version of the Chrome extension following this guide:
👉 How to debug your extension

After installing it, open:

chrome-extension://{your-extension-id}/popup.html

and then press Ctrl + Shift + I (Windows) | Cmd + Opt + I (Mac) to open the Debug Console.
You should be able to see any error messages there — that might help identify what’s going wrong on your setup.

[liuyanchen1015]

Hi, I have confirmed the integration has been added to the database’s Connections section. And I tried the debug version as you suggested. Here is the error message I got:

[denkiwakame]

This error indicates that the token retrieval via the integration ID has failed.
In most cases, this happens when the integration ID is not registered correctly. (e.g. including spaces

However, if you saw the “success” message when adding the integration ID from the Options page, that’s a bit strange. 🤔
(This means that getBotToken has succeeded at that moment)

You can open the Network tab in the Developer Console and reload the popup html to inspect the request and response of getBotToken in detail.

If the issue is caused by an API rate limit, it’s temporary — please wait a while and try again later.

[liuyanchen1015]

yeah, it's weird because I indeed saw the "success message" when registering the intergration ID:

I inspected "getBotToken" again and here is the detail:

[liuyanchen1015]

@denkiwakame Hi, I tried four different Notion accounts and found some interesting results. Two of the accounts I tried are on the free plan, and the other two are on the Education Plus plan. I found that the arxiv2notion tool works perfectly with the free plan accounts, but not with the Education Plus accounts.
This is quite interesting - I’d really appreciate any insights you might have about what could be causing the problem.

[denkiwakame]

Hi @liuyanchen1015 ,

Here’s a natural, polite English reply you can send — keeps the technical details clear and actionable:

Thanks so much for investigating this in detail, I really appreciate it.
Your tests helped me uncover two issues:

a. The options “connection check” can falsely show success
Due to a change in Notion’s internal API, the options flow sometimes displays a success message even when the connection actually failed (e.g. the API returned 400 Bad Request). I’ll update the code to fix this problem.
See the relevant code here:
https://github.com/denkiwakame/arxiv2notion/blob/main/src/js/options.js#L63-L73
In your case it looks like the options page reported success while the token retrieval actually failed. #24

b. The internal getBotToken behavior may differ by account type
Your Free vs Education Plus results are interesting — it’s possible that Notion’s non-public/internal endpoint (getBotToken) behaves differently across account types. I don’t have an Education Plus account to reproduce that locally, so I can’t confirm, but you can inspect the exact behavior yourself with these steps:

1. Open https://www.notion.so/profile/integrations/ and select the integration.
2. Press Ctrl + Shift + I to open DevTools.
3. Go to the Network tab and filter by getBotToken.
4. Click Internal Integration Secret > Show (if present).
5. Inspect the getBotToken request — check the request headers, payload, and response body.

That will reveal the exact request/response details for getBotToken (and show any differences between account types).

If you want, paste the (redacted) response body of the failing getBotToken call here (remove any secrets/tokens) and I’ll help interpret it. I’ll also prepare a fix to make the options check stricter so a 400 won’t be treated as success.

Caution

Please be careful not to share the secret or any authentication tokens publicly.

Thanks again — this report is really helpful.

[liuyanchen1015]

Of course, here is the screenshots for the details:

---

hope it's helpful

[denkiwakame]

@liuyanchen1015
Thank you so much for your cooperation.
For security reasons, I’ve hidden the images from this thread.
At first glance, it looks similar to the Free account behavior, but I’ll take a closer look later to confirm.

[liuyanchen1015]

@denkiwakame Hi, I would like to kindly follow up on this matter. May I ask if there has been any progress on this issue?

[denkiwakame]

@liuyanchen1015
Sorry for the delayed response, I’ve been tied up with weekday duties.
I carefully compared the provided API specification with the one available for my normal account, but I couldn’t find any differences so far 🤔 🤔 🤔 .
Since I haven’t been able to reproduce the issue on my side, I’m planning the following next steps:

1. Modify getBotToken so that it returns fail if the token retrieval fails.
2. Add a UI component to display detailed information when getBotToken or any other API request fails.

Thanks again for your continuous support and interest.

[liuyanchen1015]

Hi @denkiwakame, just a gentle reminder about this issue whenever you have a moment. No rush at all! Thanks!

[denkiwakame]

@liuyanchen1015
Sorry for the long pause.
To be honest, since I’m no longer a student, I don’t have access to the same environment anymore, so it took me some time to investigate the issue.
I believe it’s important that many students can use this tool, so I’m planning to improve it step by step, e.g. better error messages #24, API updates #25, and so on.
Thanks a lot for your patience and for saying “no rush.”
I really appreciate it, and sorry again for the irregular updates.