Laravel 5.3 - Sharing $user variable to all views

Question

So after finding out that sharing views in Controller.php's constructer no longer works because it always returns null to Auth::user(), I am looking for a different way to do it.

I am simply looking for a way to pass a $user variable with the current signed in user to all my views.

Previous way which worked in 5.2 and below:

public function __construct()
{
    view()->share('signed_in', Auth::check());
    view()->share('user', Auth::user());
 }

This no longer works. How else can I share variables?

I have tried:

public function __construct()
{
    $this->middleware(function ($request, $next) {
        $this->user = Auth::user();
        $this->signed_in = Auth::guest();

        view()->share('signed_in', $this->signed_in);
        view()->share('user', $this->user);

        return $next($request);
    });
}

But the code above does not work. It does load the page without a "Undefined Variable $user" error but it just show the navigation bar and then nothing else. It also messes up the site CSS for some reason.

Is there any other way I can do it? Please help. Thank you.

Answer 1

I fixed this issue quite easily.

In my \App\Http\Controllers\Controller.php

class Controller extends BaseController
{
    use AuthorizesRequests, DispatchesJobs, ValidatesRequests;

    private $user;
    private $signed_in;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->middleware(function ($request, $next) {
            $this->user = Auth::user();
            $this->signed_in = Auth::check();

            view()->share('signed_in', $this->signed_in);
            view()->share('user', $this->user);

            return $next($request);
        });

    }

}

By putting the view()->share() in a closure of a middleware, I was able to achieve this.