I'm new to next.js and I've read the data caching section and searched this forum but I'm still completely stumped.

I have a library with the 'use server' directive at the top. I have two functions that Set and Clear a global string. The string is empty to start. When Set is called, it checks for an empty string, and if empty, it gets some user metadata in auth0 (perhaps with a behind the scenes fetch) and saves it in a global. The Clear simply resets the global to an empty string.

When my code runs, I see the Clear being run, and before Clear exits I print the string and it is empty. But at the top of the next Set, it still has the old value, and my check for empty is false, so its just returned. Its like it can only be set once...

I understand that the behind the scenes auth0 fetch may be cached, but is my global being cached so that even this server side code can't Clear it?

What's happening here, thanks so much!

'use server' let userId = ""; async function getUser() { if (userId === "") { // get data using a 3rd party api (behind the scenes fetch) const session = await getSession(); userId = session?.user.user_metadata.practitionerId; console.info("Retrieved userid ", userId); } else console.info("Re-using userid ", userId); return userId; } async function clearUser() { userId = ""; console.info("user Id is now cleared: ",userId); }