Laravel 5.2 Session flash not working even with web middleware

Question

I am trying to implement flash messaging using sessions but am unable to do so.

In my controller I have:

public function store(Request $request) {
    session()->flash('donald', 'duck');
    session()->put('mickey', 'mouse');
    return redirect()->action('CustomerController@index')->with('bugs', 'bunny');
}

But when I check the session variables in the view, I can only see the values from session()->put('mickey', 'mouse').

Session:

{"_token":"F6DoffOFb17B36eEJQruxvPe0ra1CbyJiaooDn3F","_previous":{"url":"http:\/\/localhost\/customers\/create"},"flash":{"old":[],"new":[]},"mickey":"mouse"}

A lot of people encountered this problem by not having the relevant routes inside the web middleware. I made sure to do this as well but it still wouldn't work.

In routes.php:

Route::group(['middleware' => ['web']], function () {

    Route::get('/', function () {
        return view('welcome');
    });

    Route::get('/customers', 'CustomerController@index');
    Route::get('/customers/create', 'CustomerController@create');
    Route::post('/customers', 'CustomerController@store');
});

In Kernel.php:

protected $middlewareGroups = [
    'web' => [
        \App\Http\Middleware\EncryptCookies::class,
        \Illuminate\Cookie\Middleware\AddQueuedCookiesToResponse::class,
        \Illuminate\Session\Middleware\StartSession::class,
        \Illuminate\View\Middleware\ShareErrorsFromSession::class,
        \App\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken::class,
    ],

    'api' => [
        'throttle:60,1',
    ],
];

Can anyone let me know what I could be doing wrong here? Thanks!

Answer 1

Fixed the issue by replacing

Route::group(['middleware' => ['web']], function () {
   ...
});

with

Route::group(['middlewareGroups' => ['web']], function () {
   ...
});

No idea why this works though when all the documentation suggests that we use ['middleware' => ['web']]

Answer 2

This is more than likely because of a change that was made to the Laravel framework (v5.2.27) that all routes by default are part of the "web" middleware, so assigning it again in your routes.php file ends up assigning it twice.

The solution is either to remove the "web" middleware from your routes OR remove the automatic assignment from the RouteServiceProvider.

Before the Laravel update:

// RouteServiceProvider.php
$router->group(['namespace' => $this->namespace], function ($router) {
    require app_path('Http/routes.php');
});

After the Laravel update:

// RouteServiceProvider.php
$router->group([
    'namespace' => $this->namespace, 'middleware' => 'web',
], function ($router) {
    require app_path('Http/routes.php');
});

Notice how the new update automatically applies the "web" middleware to all routes. Simply remove it here if you wish to continue using Laravel 5.2 as you have before (manually assigning "web" middleware in your routes.php).