Introduction
Since HTTP driven applications are stateless, sessions provide a way to store information about the user across requests. Laravel ships with a variety of session back-ends available for use through a clean, unified API. Support for popular back-ends such as Memcached, Redis, and databases is included out of the box.
Configuration
The session configuration file is stored at
config/session.php. Be sure to review the
well documented options available to you in this file.
By default, Laravel is configured to use the
file session driver, which will work well
for many applications. In production applications, you
may consider using the memcached or
redis drivers for even faster session
performance.
The session driver defines where session
data will be stored for each request. Laravel ships with
several great drivers out of the box:
Note: The array driver is typically used for running tests to prevent session data from persisting.
Driver Prerequisites
Database
When using the database session driver, you
will need to setup a table to contain the session items.
Below is an example Schema declaration for
the table:
Schema::create('sessions', function ($table) {
$table->string('id')->unique();
$table->integer('user_id')->nullable();
$table->string('ip_address', 45)->nullable();
$table->text('user_agent')->nullable();
$table->text('payload');
$table->integer('last_activity');
});
You may use the session:table Artisan
command to generate this migration for you!
php artisan session:table
composer dump-autoload
php artisan migrate
Redis
Before using Redis sessions with Laravel, you will need
to install the predis/predis package (~1.0)
via Composer.
Other Session Considerations
The Laravel framework uses the flash session
key internally, so you should not add an item to the
session by that name.
If you need all stored session data to be encrypted, set
the encrypt configuration option to
true.
Basic Usage
Accessing The Session
First, let's access the session. We can access the session instance via the HTTP request, which can be type-hinted on a controller method. Remember, controller method dependencies are injected via the Laravel service container:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
class UserController extends Controller
{
/**
* Show the profile for the given user.
*
* @param Request $request
* @param int $id
* @return Response
*/
public function showProfile(Request $request, $id)
{
$value = $request->session()->get('key');
//
}
}
When you retrieve a value from the session, you may also
pass a default value as the second argument to the
get method. This default value will be
returned if the specified key does not exist in the
session. If you pass a Closure as the
default value to the get method, the
Closure will be executed and its result
returned:
$value = $request->session()->get('key', 'default');
$value = $request->session()->get('key', function() {
return 'default';
});
If you would like to retrieve all data from the session,
you may use the all method:
$data = $request->session()->all();
You may also use the global session PHP
function to retrieve and store data in the session:
Route::get('home', function () {
// Retrieve a piece of data from the session...
$value = session('key');
// Store a piece of data in the session...
session(['key' => 'value']);
});
Determining If An Item Exists In The Session
The has method may be used to check if an
item exists in the session. This method will return
true if the item exists:
if ($request->session()->has('users')) {
//
}
Storing Data In The Session
Once you have access to the session instance, you may
call a variety of functions to interact with the
underlying data. For example, the put
method stores a new piece of data in the session:
$request->session()->put('key', 'value');
Pushing To Array Session Values
The push method may be used to push a new
value onto a session value that is an array. For
example, if the user.teams key contains an
array of team names, you may push a new value onto the
array like so:
$request->session()->push('user.teams', 'developers');
Retrieving And Deleting An Item
The pull method will retrieve and delete an
item from the session:
$value = $request->session()->pull('key', 'default');
Deleting Items From The Session
The forget method will remove a piece of
data from the session. If you would like to remove all
data from the session, you may use the
flush method:
$request->session()->forget('key');
$request->session()->flush();
Regenerating The Session ID
If you need to regenerate the session ID, you may use the
regenerate method:
$request->session()->regenerate();
Flash Data
Sometimes you may wish to store items in the session only
for the next request. You may do so using the
flash method. Data stored in the session
using this method will only be available during the
subsequent HTTP request, and then will be deleted. Flash
data is primarily useful for short-lived status
messages:
$request->session()->flash('status', 'Task was successful!');
If you need to keep your flash data around for even more
requests, you may use the reflash method,
which will keep all of the flash data around for an
additional request. If you only need to keep specific
flash data around, you may use the keep
method:
$request->session()->reflash();
$request->session()->keep(['username', 'email']);
Adding Custom Session Drivers
To add additional drivers to Laravel's session back-end,
you may use the extend method on the
Session facade.
You can call the extend method from the
boot method of a service provider:
<?php
namespace App\Providers;
use Session;
use App\Extensions\MongoSessionStore;
use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider;
class SessionServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider
{
/**
* Perform post-registration booting of services.
*
* @return void
*/
public function boot()
{
Session::extend('mongo', function($app) {
// Return implementation of SessionHandlerInterface...
return new MongoSessionStore;
});
}
/**
* Register bindings in the container.
*
* @return void
*/
public function register()
{
//
}
}
Note that your custom session driver should implement the
SessionHandlerInterface. This interface
contains just a few simple methods we need to implement.
A stubbed MongoDB implementation looks something like
this:
<?php
namespace App\Extensions;
class MongoHandler implements SessionHandlerInterface
{
public function open($savePath, $sessionName) {}
public function close() {}
public function read($sessionId) {}
public function write($sessionId, $data) {}
public function destroy($sessionId) {}
public function gc($lifetime) {}
}
Since these methods are not as readily understandable as
the cache StoreInterface, let's quickly
cover what each of the methods do:
Once the session driver has been registered, you may use
the mongo driver in your
config/session.php configuration file.