Laravel Middleware return variable to controller

Question

I am carrying out a permissions check on a user to determine whether they can view a page or not. This involves passing the request through some middleware first.

The problem I have is I am duplicating the same database query in the middleware and in the controller before returning the data to the view itself.

Here is an example of the setup;

-- routes.php

Route::get('pages/{id}', [
   'as' => 'pages',
   'middleware' => 'pageUser'
   'uses' => 'PagesController@view'
]);

-- PageUserMiddleware.php (class PageUserMiddleware)

public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        //get the page
        $pageId = $request->route('id');
        //find the page with users
        $page = Page::with('users')->where('id', $pageId)->first();
        //check if the logged in user exists for the page
        if(!$page->users()->wherePivot('user_id', Auth::user()->id)->exists()) {
            //redirect them if they don't exist
            return redirect()->route('redirectRoute');
        }
        return $next($request);
    }

-- PagesController.php

public function view($id)
{
    $page = Page::with('users')->where('id', $id)->first();
    return view('pages.view', ['page' => $page]);
}

As you can see, the Page::with('users')->where('id', $id)->first() is repeated in both the middleware and controller. I need to pass the data through from one to the other so an not to duplicate.

Answer 1

I believe the correct way to do this (in Laravel 5.x) is to add your custom fields to the attributes property.

From the source code comments, we can see attributes is used for custom parameters:

 /**
 * Custom parameters.
 *
 * @var \Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\ParameterBag
 *
 * @api
 */
public $attributes;

So you would implement this as follows;

$request->attributes->add(['myAttribute' => 'myValue']);

You can then retrieved the attribute by calling:

\Request::get('myAttribute');

Or from request object in laravel 5.5+

 $request->get('myAttribute');