Laravel - How to redirect to login if user is not authenticated

Question

I'm trying to use the __constructor from the extended class (AdminController extends AdminBaseController) but aparently it's not working and I have no idea of what can be, here you can see both of my classes:

AdminBaseController.php

class AdminBaseController extends Controller
{
    public function __construct(){
        if (!Auth::user()){
            return view('admin.pages.login.index');
        }
    }
}

AdminController.php

class AdminController extends AdminBaseController
{
    public function __construct(){
        parent::__construct();
    }

    public function index()
    {
        return view('admin.pages.admin.index');
    }

    public function ajuda()
    {
        return view('admin.pages.admin.ajuda');
    }
}

EDIT

---

This is my admin route group:

Route::group([
    'prefix' => 'admin',
    'middleware' => 'auth'
], function () {
    Route::get('/', 'Admin\AdminController@index');

    Route::get('login', 'Admin\AuthController@getLogin');
    Route::post('login', 'Admin\AuthController@postLogin');
    Route::get('logout', 'Admin\AuthController@getLogout');

    Route::group(['prefix' => 'configuracoes'], function () {
        Route::get('geral', 'Admin\AdminConfiguracoesController@geral');
        Route::get('social', 'Admin\AdminConfiguracoesController@social');
        Route::get('analytics', 'Admin\AdminConfiguracoesController@analytics');
    });

    Route::get('ajuda', 'Admin\AdminController@ajuda');
});

Answer 1

The controller is not the right place to check if a user is authenticated or not. You should use a middleware for that. To get info on what a middleware is check here

Let's see how you can use the default Laravel's auth middleware for this purpose:

First of all get rid of your AdminBaseController and use only AdminController

Then you have to check that the auth middleware is enabled in the file app\Http\Kernel.php

You should have the line:

protected $routeMiddleware = [
    'auth' => \App\Http\Middleware\Authenticate::class,

This means that the middleware is active and usable for your routes.

Now let's go inside the middleware class in app\Http\Middleware\Authenticate.php to specify the middleware's behaviour :

//this method will be triggered before your controller constructor
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
    //check here if the user is authenticated
    if ( ! $this->auth->user() )
    {
        // here you should redirect to login 
    }

    return $next($request);
}

Now the only thing left to do is to decide for what routes you should apply the middleware. Let's suppose you have two routes that you want to be only accessible from authenticated users, you should specify to use the middleware for these two routes in this way:

Route::group( ['middleware' => 'auth' ], function()
{
    Route::get('admin/index', 'AdminController@index');
    Route::get('admin/ajuda', 'AdminController@ajuda');
});

Answer 2

Use middleware for this purpose and then in controller constructor use it as in example below.

public function __construct()
{
    $this->middleware('guest', ['except' => 'logout']);
}

And then you need to secure routes where you want from user to be logged in to access.

Route::group(['middleware' => 'auth'], function() {
      Route::get('/dashboard', 'DashboardController@index');
});