Laravel Echo - Allow guests to connect to presence channel

Question

I am using laravel-echo-server to run Laravel Echo to broadcast events.

I have a user counter channel which shows all the users on the app. For this I am using a presence channel. This works fine for logged in users, but guests just never get connected.

I've setup the below in the BroadcastServiceProvider:

Broadcast::channel('global', function () { return ['name' => 'guest']; });

Which from what I can tell, should allow everyone in as 'guests'. I'm guessing there's some middleware or auth that's being checked before this that I need to disable for this channel.

Any help on getting all clients joining this presence channel would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

For anyone looking for answers to this. It is indeed possible to auth guests into presence channels you just need to override the Broadcast::routes() from the service provider with your own.

As an example my presence channel 'global' accepts guests:

Route::post('/broadcasting/auth', function(Illuminate\Http\Request $req) { if($req->channel_name == 'presence-global'){return 'global';} return abort(403); });

This could be extended in various directions, or could continue to pass other presence and private channels through to the default Broadcast::auth method

Answer 2

You may create a temporary user with factory(User::class)->make(...) and authenticate it with a middleware to use it as a guest.

Step 1: Creating the middleware

Run: php artisan make:middleware AuthenticateGuest

In app/Http/Middleware/AuthenticateGuest.php:

public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
    Auth::login(factory(User::class)->make([
        'id' => (int) str_replace('.', '', microtime(true))
    ]));

    return $next($request);
}

Now setup the AuthenticateGuest middleware in Kernel.php.

In app\Http\Kernel.php:

protected $routeMiddleware = [
    ...
    'authenticate-guest' => \App\Http\Middleware\AuthenticateGuest::class,
];

Step 2: Setup Broadcast::channel route

In routes/channels.php:

Broadcast::channel('chatroom', function ($user) {
    return $user; // here will return the guest user object
});

More at: https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/broadcasting#authorizing-presence-channels

Answer 3

The other solutions didn't work for me for a guest presence channel, this is what I ended up with:

// routes/channels.php

<?php
use Illuminate\Auth\GenericUser;

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Broadcast Channels
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here you may register all of the event broadcasting channels that your
| application supports. The given channel authorization callbacks are
| used to check if an authenticated user can listen to the channel.
|
*/

Route::post('/custom/broadcast/auth/route', function () {
    $user = new GenericUser(['id' => microtime()]);

    request()->setUserResolver(function () use ($user) {
        return $user;
    });

    return Broadcast::auth(request());
});

Broadcast::channel('online.{uuid}', function ($user, $uuid) {
    return [
        'id' => $user->id,
        'uuid' => $uuid
    ];
});