Laravel session data not sticking across page loads

Question

I tried running the following code:

Session::put('progress', '5%');

dd(Session::get('progress'));

This will show '5%' in the dump.

If I rerun the same page but comment out Session::put('progress', '5%'); so that only the dd() line is called, I get a null value instead of the 5% values stored in the previous page load.

Here is my sessions config, so I know it should be storing the data:

'driver' => 'native',
'lifetime' => 120,
'expire_on_close' => false,

Why is Laravel not storing the session data across page loads?

Answer 1

The problem is because you are killing the script before Laravel finishes its application lifecycle, so the values put in session (but not yet stored) got killed too.

When a Laravel application lifecycle starts, any value put in Session are not yet stored until the application lifecycle ends. That is when any value put in Session will be finally/really stored.

If you check the source you will find the same aforementioned behavior:

 public function put($key, $value)
 {
     $all = $this->all();

     array_set($all, $key, $value);

     $this->replace($all);
 }

---

If you want to test it, do the following:

1. Store a value in session without killing the script.

   Route::get('test', function() {
       Session::put('progress', '5%');
       // dd(Session::get('progress'));
   });
   

2. Retrieve the value already stored:

   Route::get('test', function() {
       // Session::put('progress', '5%');
       dd(Session::get('progress'));
   });
   

Answer 2

Rubens Mariuzzo's answer is very good. I just want to add that if you need the data to be stored immediately you could use the save method:

Session::put('progress', '5%');
Session::save();