Sessions

What are used the sessions for?

• store the data on server side.
• to store data when I go from a page to another one.
• User login and authentication.

Where are the session data stored ?

You can specify it at config/session.php It can be:

• file - sessions are stored in storage/framework/sessions.
• cookie - sessions are stored in secure, encrypted cookies.
• database - sessions are stored in a relational database.
• memcached / redis - sessions are stored in one of these fast, cache based stores.
• dynamodb - sessions are stored in AWS DynamoDB.
• array - sessions are stored in a PHP array and will not be persisted.

Example

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idw3k9EvmcE

• Create a login form
• Store data in session
• Get data from session
• Delete data from session

views/login.blade.php

<form action="user" method="post">
    @csrf
    <input type="text" name="username" placeholder="enter user name"> <br>
    <input type="text" name="password" placeholder="enter user password"> <br>
    <button type="submit">Login</button>
</form>

routes/web.php

Route::view('login', 'login');

Create the controller:

php artisan make:controller UserAuth

app/Http/Controllers/UserAuth.php

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class UserAuth extends Controller{
	function userLogin(Request $request){
		return $request->input();
	}
}

I add it to the routes.
routes/web.php

Route::post("user", [UserAuth::class, 'userLogin']);
Route::view('login', 'login');

I can test the form. And it will show the data on submit.

Store the data in the session

Put the data in a variable $data and add it to the session with a key named user, then delete it.

app/Http/Controllers/UserAuth.php

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class UserAuth extends Controller{
	function userLogin(Request $request){
		$data = $request->input();
		$request->session->put('user', $data['user]);
		
		// To test
		//echo session('user');
		
		// Redirect to the profile route
		return redirect('profile');
	}
}

Now, I create a profile view to show the data. views/profile.blade.php

<h1>Profile Page</h1>
<h2>Hello, </h2>

I add it to the routes.
routes/web.php

Route::post("user", [UserAuth::class, 'userLogin']);
Route::view('login', 'login');
Route::view('profile', 'profile');

Delete data from the session

Now we want to allow the user to logout. To do that we will delete the user data from the session.

I add a logout link to the profile view. views/profile.blade.php

<h1>Profile Page</h1>
<h2>Hello, </h2>

<a href="/logout">Logout</a>

Than write a route for that.
When user click on logout, if the session has the user key, remove it.

routes/web.php

Route::post("user", [UserAuth::class, 'userLogin']);
Route::view('login', 'login');
Route::view('profile', 'profile');

Route::get('/logout', function(){
    if(session->had('user')){
        session()->pull('user');
    }
    return redirect('login');
});

And this logout already work.

Then we want to not allow the user to go to the login page when we are logged in.

routes/web.php

Route::post("user", [UserAuth::class, 'userLogin']);
//Route::view('login', 'login');
Route::view('profile', 'profile');

Route::get('/login', function(){
    if(session->had('user')){
        return redirect('profile');
    }
    return view('login');
});


Route::get('/logout', function(){
    if(session->had('user')){
        session()->pull('user');
    }
    return redirect('login');
});