Laravel customized session.lifetime at user level

Question

I am overwriting session.timeout value in one of the middleware (for Laravel web app) but it doesn't seem to be affecting in terms of timing out a session. Though if I debug it shows value I have overwritten.

Config::set('session.lifetime', 1440);

default value is as following:

'lifetime' => 15,

Website that I am working on has very short session lifetime for most of the users but for selected users I want to provide extended session lifetime.

Answer 1

It seems the only way to accomplish a dynamic lifetime value, is by setting the value in middleware, before the session gets initiated. Otherwise its too late, as the application SessionHandler will have already been instantiated using the default config value.

namespace App\Http\Middleware;

class ExtendSession
{
    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @param  \Closure  $next
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle($request, $next)
    {
        $lifetime = 2;
        config(['session.lifetime' => $lifetime]);
        return $next($request);
    }
}

Then in the kernel.php file, add this class prior to StartSession.

\App\Http\Middleware\ExtendSession::class,
\Illuminate\Session\Middleware\StartSession::class,