Why does the Laravel API return a 419 status code on POST and PUT methods?

Question

I am trying to create a RESTful API by using Laravel. I have created my controller using php artisan make:controller RestController and this is my controller code:

<?php  namespace App\Http\Controllers;  use Illuminate\Http\Request;  class RestController extends Controller {     private $arr = array(             array("name"=>"jon", "family"=>"doe"),             array("name"=>"jhon", "family" => "doue")         );     public function index(){         return json_encode($this->arr);     }      public function store(Request $request){         return "oops!!";     }      public function update (Request $request, $id){         return "test";     }  } 

I have added this line of code to create this route in my routes/web.php file:

Route::resource('person', 'RestController'); 

When I try to test this api on GET /person it works fine but on POST and PUT I am getting a 419 status code from Laravel.

Answer 1

If you are developing REST APIs, you better not add tokens. If you are using 5.4 or 5.5 you can use api.php instead of web.php. In api.php you don't need token verifcation on post requests.

If you are using web.php, then you can exculde routes that you don't want to validate with CSRF Tokens.

Here is the official documentation:

Excluding URIs From CSRF Protection

Sometimes you may wish to exclude a set of URIs from CSRF protection. For example, if you are using Stripe to process payments and are utilizing their webhook system, you will need to exclude your Stripe webhook handler route from CSRF protection since Stripe will not know what CSRF token to send to your routes.

Typically, you should place these kinds of routes outside of the web middleware group that the RouteServiceProvider applies to all routes in the routes/web.php file. However, you may also exclude the routes by adding their URIs to the $except property of the VerifyCsrfToken middleware:

<?php  namespace App\Http\Middleware;  use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken as BaseVerifier;  class VerifyCsrfToken extends BaseVerifier {     /**      * The URIs that should be excluded from CSRF verification.      *      * @var array      */     protected $except = [         'stripe/*',         'http://example.com/foo/bar',         'http://example.com/foo/*',     ]; } 

For reference https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/csrf

Answer 2

As per my Knowledge there are two methods to solve this

Method 1: Add CsrF Token

Method 2: Exclude URIs from CSRF protection

How to use

Method 1: Add one more variable to your POST request

_token: "{{ csrf_token() }}" 

Example for Ajax

req = $.ajax({     type: "POST",     url: "/search",     data: {         "key": "value",         _token: "{{ csrf_token() }}",     },     dataType: "text",     success: function(msg) {         // ...     } }); 

Example if you using forms

<input type="hidden" name="_token" id="token" value="{{ csrf_token() }}"> 

Method 2: There is a file named VerifyCsrfToken in following location

yourProjectDirectory/app/Http/Middleware 

Add your URL in following method

 protected $except = [      'url1/',      'url2/',  ]; 

When To use

• If you are the owner(full control) of API, use Method 1, as CSRF Token adds security to your application.

• If you are unable to add CSRF Token like in case if you are using any third party API's, webhooks etc., then go for Method 2.