Redis – Django Channels consumer consuming 1 call twice

I am using a combination of DRF 3.11.0 and Channels 2.4.0 to implement a backend, and it is hosted on Heroku on 1 dyno with a Redis resource attached. I have a socket on my React frontend that successfully sends/received from the backend server.

I am having an issues where any message sent back to the front end over the socket is being sent twice. I have confirmed through console.log that the front end is only pinging the back end once. I can confirm through print() inside of the API call that the function is only calling async_to_sync(channel_layer.group_send) once as well. The issue is coming from my consumer – when I use print(self.channel_name) inside of share_document_via_videocall(), I can see that two instances with different self.channel_names are being called (specific.AOQenhTn!fUybdYEsViaP and specific.AOQenhTn!NgtWxuiHtHBw. It seems like the consumer has connected to two separate channels, but I’m not sure why. When I put print() statements in my connect() I only see it go through the connect process once.

How do I ensure that I am only connected to one channel?

in settings.py:

CHANNEL_LAYERS = {
    'default': {
        'BACKEND': 'channels_redis.core.RedisChannelLayer',
        'CONFIG': {
            #"hosts": [('127.0.0.1', 6379)],
            "hosts": [(REDIS_HOST)],
        },
    },
}

Consumer:

import json
from asgiref.sync import async_to_sync
from channels.db import database_sync_to_async

from channels.generic.websocket import AsyncWebsocketConsumer
from rest_framework.authtoken.models import Token
from django.contrib.auth.models import AnonymousUser
from .exceptions import ClientError
import datetime
from django.utils import timezone

class HeaderConsumer(AsyncWebsocketConsumer):
    async def connect(self):
        print("connecting")

        await self.accept()
        print("starting")
        print(self.channel_name)
        await self.send("request_for_token")


    async def continue_connect(self):
        print("continuing")
        print(self.channel_name)

        await self.get_user_from_token(self.scope['token'])

        await self.channel_layer.group_add(
            "u_%d" % self.user['id'],
            self.channel_name,
        )
        #... more stuff


    async def disconnect(self, code):
        await self.channel_layer.group_discard(
            "u_%d" % self.user['id'],
            self.channel_name,
        )


    async def receive(self, text_data):
        text_data_json = json.loads(text_data)
        if 'token' in text_data_json:
            self.scope['token'] = text_data_json['token']
            await self.continue_connect()


    async def share_document_via_videocall(self, event):

        # Send a message down to the client
        print("share_document received")
        print(event)
        print(self.channel_name)
        print(self.user['id'])

        await self.send(text_data=json.dumps(
            {
                "type": event['type'],
                "message": event["message"],
            },
        ))

    @database_sync_to_async
    def get_user_from_token(self, t):
        try:
            print("trying token" + t)
            token = Token.objects.get(key=t)
            self.user = token.user.get_profile.json()
        except Token.DoesNotExist:
            print("failed")
            self.user = AnonymousUser()

REST API call:

class ShareViaVideoChat(APIView):
    permission_classes = (permissions.IsAuthenticated,)

    def post(self, request, format=None):
        data = request.data
        recipient_list = data['recipient_list']

        channel_layer = get_channel_layer()
        for u in recipient_list:
            if u['id'] != None:
                print("sending to:")
                print('u_%d' % u['id'])
                async_to_sync(channel_layer.group_send)(
                    'u_%d' % u['id'],
                    {'type': 'share_document_via_videocall',
                     'message': {
                             'document': {'data': {}},
                             'sender': {'name': 'some name'}
                         }
                     }
                )

        return Response()