HTTP Session
Introduction
Since HTTP driven applications are stateless, sessions provide a way to store information about the user across multiple requests. That user information is typically placed in a persistent store / backend that can be accessed from subsequent requests.
Laravel ships with a variety of session backends that are accessed through an expressive, unified API. Support for popular backends such as Memcached, Redis, and databases is included.
Configuration
Your application's session configuration file is stored at config/session.php
. Be sure to review the options available to you in this file. By default, Laravel is configured to use the database
session driver.
The session driver
configuration option defines where session data will be stored for each request. Laravel includes a variety of drivers:
-
file
- sessions are stored instorage/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.
The array driver is primarily used during testing and prevents the data stored in the session from being persisted.
Driver Prerequisites
Database
When using the database
session driver, you will need to ensure that you have a database table to contain the session data. Typically, this is included in Laravel's default 0001_01_01_000000_create_users_table.php
database migration; however, if for any reason you do not have a sessions
table, you may use the make:session-table
Artisan command to generate this migration:
php artisan make:session-table php artisan migrate
Redis
Before using Redis sessions with Laravel, you will need to either install the PhpRedis PHP extension via PECL or install the predis/predis
package (~1.0) via Composer. For more information on configuring Redis, consult Laravel's Redis documentation.
The SESSION_CONNECTION
environment variable, or the connection
option in the session.php
configuration file, may be used to specify which Redis connection is used for session storage.
Interacting With the Session
Retrieving Data
There are two primary ways of working with session data in Laravel: the global session
helper and via a Request
instance. First, let's look at accessing the session via a Request
instance, which can be type-hinted on a route closure or controller method. Remember, controller method dependencies are automatically injected via the Laravel service container:
<?php namespace App\Http\Controllers; use Illuminate\Http\Request;use Illuminate\View\View; class UserController extends Controller{ /** * Show the profile for the given user. */ public function show(Request $request, string $id): View { $value = $request->session()->get('key'); // ... $user = $this->users->find($id); return view('user.profile', ['user' => $user]); }}
When you retrieve an item 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 and the requested key does not exist, the closure will be executed and its result returned:
$value = $request->session()->get('key', 'default'); $value = $request->session()->get('key', function () { return 'default';});
The Global Session Helper
You may also use the global session
PHP function to retrieve and store data in the session. When the session
helper is called with a single, string argument, it will return the value of that session key. When the helper is called with an array of key / value pairs, those values will be stored in the session:
Route::get('/home', function () { // Retrieve a piece of data from the session... $value = session('key'); // Specifying a default value... $value = session('key', 'default'); // Store a piece of data in the session... session(['key' => 'value']);});
There is little practical difference between using the session via an HTTP request instance versus using the global session
helper. Both methods are testable via the assertSessionHas
method which is available in all of your test cases.
Retrieving All Session Data
If you would like to retrieve all the data in the session, you may use the all
method:
$data = $request->session()->all();
Retrieving a Portion of the Session Data
The only
and except
methods may be used to retrieve a subset of the session data:
$data = $request->session()->only(['username', 'email']); $data = $request->session()->except(['username', 'email']);
Determining if an Item Exists in the Session
To determine if an item is present in the session, you may use the has
method. The has
method returns true
if the item is present and is not null
:
if ($request->session()->has('users')) { // ...}
To determine if an item is present in the session, even if its value is null
, you may use the exists
method:
if ($request->session()->exists('users')) { // ...}
To determine if an item is not present in the session, you may use the missing
method. The missing
method returns true
if the item is not present:
if ($request->session()->missing('users')) { // ...}
Storing Data
To store data in the session, you will typically use the request instance's put
method or the global session
helper:
// Via a request instance...$request->session()->put('key', 'value'); // Via the global "session" helper...session(['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 in a single statement:
$value = $request->session()->pull('key', 'default');
Incrementing and Decrementing Session Values
If your session data contains an integer you wish to increment or decrement, you may use the increment
and decrement
methods:
$request->session()->increment('count'); $request->session()->increment('count', $incrementBy = 2); $request->session()->decrement('count'); $request->session()->decrement('count', $decrementBy = 2);
Flash Data
Sometimes you may wish to store items in the session for the next request. You may do so using the flash
method. Data stored in the session using this method will be available immediately and during the subsequent HTTP request. After the subsequent HTTP request, the flashed data will be deleted. Flash data is primarily useful for short-lived status messages:
$request->session()->flash('status', 'Task was successful!');
If you need to persist your flash data for several requests, you may use the reflash
method, which will keep all of the flash data for an additional request. If you only need to keep specific flash data, you may use the keep
method:
$request->session()->reflash(); $request->session()->keep(['username', 'email']);
To persist your flash data only for the current request, you may use the now
method:
$request->session()->now('status', 'Task was successful!');
Deleting Data
The forget
method will remove a piece of data from the session. If you would like to remove all data from the session, you may use the flush
method:
// Forget a single key...$request->session()->forget('name'); // Forget multiple keys...$request->session()->forget(['name', 'status']); $request->session()->flush();
Regenerating the Session ID
Regenerating the session ID is often done in order to prevent malicious users from exploiting a session fixation attack on your application.
Laravel automatically regenerates the session ID during authentication if you are using one of the Laravel application starter kits or Laravel Fortify; however, if you need to manually regenerate the session ID, you may use the regenerate
method:
$request->session()->regenerate();
If you need to regenerate the session ID and remove all data from the session in a single statement, you may use the invalidate
method:
$request->session()->invalidate();
Session Blocking
To utilize session blocking, your application must be using a cache driver that supports atomic locks. Currently, those cache drivers include the memcached
, dynamodb
, redis
, mongodb
(included in the official mongodb/laravel-mongodb
package), database
, file
, and array
drivers. In addition, you may not use the cookie
session driver.
By default, Laravel allows requests using the same session to execute concurrently. So, for example, if you use a JavaScript HTTP library to make two HTTP requests to your application, they will both execute at the same time. For many applications, this is not a problem; however, session data loss can occur in a small subset of applications that make concurrent requests to two different application endpoints which both write data to the session.
To mitigate this, Laravel provides functionality that allows you to limit concurrent requests for a given session. To get started, you may simply chain the block
method onto your route definition. In this example, an incoming request to the /profile
endpoint would acquire a session lock. While this lock is being held, any incoming requests to the /profile
or /order
endpoints which share the same session ID will wait for the first request to finish executing before continuing their execution:
Route::post('/profile', function () { // ...})->block($lockSeconds = 10, $waitSeconds = 10) Route::post('/order', function () { // ...})->block($lockSeconds = 10, $waitSeconds = 10)
The block
method accepts two optional arguments. The first argument accepted by the block
method is the maximum number of seconds the session lock should be held for before it is released. Of course, if the request finishes executing before this time the lock will be released earlier.
The second argument accepted by the block
method is the number of seconds a request should wait while attempting to obtain a session lock. An Illuminate\Contracts\Cache\LockTimeoutException
will be thrown if the request is unable to obtain a session lock within the given number of seconds.
If neither of these arguments is passed, the lock will be obtained for a maximum of 10 seconds and requests will wait a maximum of 10 seconds while attempting to obtain a lock:
Route::post('/profile', function () { // ...})->block()
Adding Custom Session Drivers
Implementing the Driver
If none of the existing session drivers fit your application's needs, Laravel makes it possible to write your own session handler. Your custom session driver should implement PHP's built-in SessionHandlerInterface
. This interface contains just a few simple methods. A stubbed MongoDB implementation looks like the following:
<?php namespace App\Extensions; class MongoSessionHandler implements \SessionHandlerInterface{ public function open($savePath, $sessionName) {} public function close() {} public function read($sessionId) {} public function write($sessionId, $data) {} public function destroy($sessionId) {} public function gc($lifetime) {}}
Since Laravel does not include a default directory to house your extensions. You are free to place them anywhere you like. In this example, we have created an Extensions
directory to house the MongoSessionHandler
.
Since the purpose of these methods is not readily understandable, here is an overview of the purpose of each method:
- The
open
method would typically be used in file based session store systems. Since Laravel ships with afile
session driver, you will rarely need to put anything in this method. You can simply leave this method empty. - The
close
method, like theopen
method, can also usually be disregarded. For most drivers, it is not needed. - The
read
method should return the string version of the session data associated with the given$sessionId
. There is no need to do any serialization or other encoding when retrieving or storing session data in your driver, as Laravel will perform the serialization for you. - The
write
method should write the given$data
string associated with the$sessionId
to some persistent storage system, such as MongoDB or another storage system of your choice. Again, you should not perform any serialization - Laravel will have already handled that for you. - The
destroy
method should remove the data associated with the$sessionId
from persistent storage. - The
gc
method should destroy all session data that is older than the given$lifetime
, which is a UNIX timestamp. For self-expiring systems like Memcached and Redis, this method may be left empty.
Registering the Driver
Once your driver has been implemented, you are ready to register it with Laravel. To add additional drivers to Laravel's session backend, you may use the extend
method provided by the Session
facade. You should call the extend
method from the boot
method of a service provider. You may do this from the existing App\Providers\AppServiceProvider
or create an entirely new provider:
<?php namespace App\Providers; use App\Extensions\MongoSessionHandler;use Illuminate\Contracts\Foundation\Application;use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Session;use Illuminate\Support\ServiceProvider; class SessionServiceProvider extends ServiceProvider{ /** * Register any application services. */ public function register(): void { // ... } /** * Bootstrap any application services. */ public function boot(): void { Session::extend('mongo', function (Application $app) { // Return an implementation of SessionHandlerInterface... return new MongoSessionHandler; }); }}
Once the session driver has been registered, you may specify the mongo
driver as your application's session driver using the SESSION_DRIVER
environment variable or within the application's config/session.php
configuration file.