Auth::user returns random user object - laravel

Question

I'm having a very strange problem that I don't know what the cause could be.
I have a Laravel 7 project configured with the standard Auth Scaffolding. This was working without issue until just recently. I noticed I was unable to login to my project (redirected back to home).
During my investigation of what the cause could be I created a test route to return
Auth::check();
Auth::check would return true even though no one was logged in.
I did another check with
Auth::user();
This is where things get weird. Here is a sample output of Auth::user()
{
"first_name":"Titus",
"last_name":"Senger",
"email":"casper.kuhic#example.org",
"username":"vwolff",
"country":"pa",
"biography":"Sed quod ad corporis quasi. Repellat tempora quo ab ut. Molestiae iure qui illo recusandae rerum iure vitae quasi. Odit ipsam ut laudantium et sed consequuntur ab non.",
"category_id":3,
"social":{
"facebook":"",
"instagram":"",
"twitter":"",
"linkedin":"",
"youtube":""
},
"avatar":[
],
"banner":[
]
}
It appears to be faker data of a user object but with no user id. If I refresh the route, I get another user object returned with completely different user data.
I thought maybe this could be returning random user data in my database as I did use a seeder/factory to create a bunch of random user accounts for testing my app. I ran
php artisan migrate:refresh
Now I confirmed that all my tables were empty, including the users table. Navigated to my test route and sure enough, still generating random user object on each refresh of Auth::user().
What is happening!? I have no idea what would have caused this. This is not a production build yet. Everything is still being worked on locally.
I have also tried rolling back several commits from github to where I know Auth was working properly and the issue seems to persist even with older versions of my code.
composer.json
{
"name": "laravel/laravel",
"type": "project",
"description": "The Laravel Framework.",
"keywords": [
"framework",
"laravel"
],
"license": "MIT",
"require": {
"php": "^7.2.5",
"doctrine/dbal": "^2.10",
"fideloper/proxy": "^4.2",
"fruitcake/laravel-cors": "^1.0",
"guzzlehttp/guzzle": "^6.5",
"laravel/cashier": "^12.1",
"laravel/framework": "^7.0",
"laravel/tinker": "^2.0",
"laravel/ui": "^2.0",
"nassajis/laravel-resumable-upload": "^1.2",
"php-ffmpeg/php-ffmpeg": "^0.16.0",
"predis/predis": "^1.1",
"pusher/pusher-php-server": "^4.1",
"spatie/laravel-medialibrary": "^8.0.0",
"spatie/laravel-permission": "^3.13",
"stripe/stripe-php": "^7.45",
"ticketpark/wsc-rest": "^1.2"
},
"require-dev": {
"facade/ignition": "^2.0",
"fzaninotto/faker": "^1.9.1",
"laracasts/generators": "^1.1",
"mockery/mockery": "^1.3.1",
"nunomaduro/collision": "^4.1",
"phpunit/phpunit": "^8.5"
},
"config": {
"optimize-autoloader": true,
"preferred-install": "dist",
"sort-packages": true
},
"extra": {
"laravel": {
"dont-discover": []
}
},
"autoload": {
"psr-4": {
"App\\": "app/"
},
"classmap": [
"database/seeds",
"database/factories"
]
},
"autoload-dev": {
"psr-4": {
"Tests\\": "tests/"
}
},
"minimum-stability": "dev",
"prefer-stable": true,
"scripts": {
"post-autoload-dump": [
"Illuminate\\Foundation\\ComposerScripts::postAutoloadDump",
"#php artisan package:discover --ansi"
],
"post-root-package-install": [
"#php -r \"file_exists('.env') || copy('.env.example', '.env');\""
],
"post-create-project-cmd": [
"#php artisan key:generate --ansi"
]
}
}
EDIT
The only thing that I recently did that may or not somehow influence this issue is changing session_driver to use database and run a migration for sessions table. I have rolled back the change and updated my session_driver to use file again, but I am still having problems.
Additional Things I've tried doing:
php artisan cache:clear
php artisan config:clear
Returning User::all() retrieves an empty array []
EDIT 2
It appears Auth::user() is some how looking at my factory as I have now commented out the user factory and receive this error when trying to view my test route:
Unable to locate factory for [App\User].
I also cannot restart my server or clear cache anymore because I receive the same error:
Unable to locate factory for [App\User].
at C:\xampp\htdocs\html\sodisting\vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\FactoryBuilder.php:273
269| */
270| protected function getRawAttributes(array $attributes = [])
271| {
272| if (! isset($this->definitions[$this->class])) {
> 273| throw new InvalidArgumentException("Unable to locate factory for [{$this->class}].");
274| }
275|
276| $definition = call_user_func(
277| $this->definitions[$this->class],
1 C:\xampp\htdocs\html\sodisting\vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\FactoryBuilder.php:296
Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\FactoryBuilder::getRawAttributes([])
2 C:\xampp\htdocs\html\sodisting\vendor\laravel\framework\src\Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Concerns\GuardsAttributes.php:155
Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\FactoryBuilder::Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\{closure}()

Answer 1

I found the issue. Turns out there was a reference in my AppServiceProvider to the factory. Some leftover test code that I completely forgot about. I feel stupid.
Thanks everyone for their help in trying to solve this with me.