User in Laravel controllers - laravel

Question

I have a system in laravel 5.3 that uses over 40 controllers and probably 200 views.
I am attempting to clean up the code and use best practice. Given that certain calls are made pretty much everywhere, it makes sense to define it somewhere "semi globally". I would assume this would be in the Controller from which all controllers extend.
One object is $user, and has child $user->organisations and $user->organisation->locations.
Loading this at a base controller (or equivalent) way would also give me the advantage that I could ensure child relationships were eager loaded in an optimal way ensuring any foreach style code never results in multiple small database lookups. There are a number of other items I want to do this for with similar ramifications for database optimisation. These all use the Auth::user(), and they affect permissions with child objects.
Given that there are about 20 properties/variables of use to be shared (all dependant on Auth::user()) removing this duplicated code from almost every method is a huge improvement.
My aim is to be able to reference $this->user from any controller, and already have pre-loaded all the child/related objects.
Laravel 5.3 re-organised the loading order, so sharing the logged-in user data as part of Controller::__construct is no longer feasible.
Here's the code attempted so far:
In Controller::__construct
$this->middleware(function ($request, $next) {
$this->user = Auth::user();
view()->share('user', $this->user);
return $next($request);
});
Unsurprisingly, this correctly sets the $user variable at View level, but not Controller level. While I do $user it at view level, this doesn't help.
Given that there are about 20 properties/variables of use to be shared (all dependant on Auth::user()) I decided that one Helper would at least move this into a centralised location. I instantiate the helper to be stored as property across all controllers : $this->authentication_helper
In an example controller: SearchController :
public function index(Request $request): View
{
$this->authentication_helper->getAuthenticationData($this);
//... logic for the search
}
With the AuthenticationHelper doing (amongst other things):
public function getAuthenticationData(Controller $controller) : void
{
$user = Auth::user();
$controller->user = User::with(
organisations.locations', // .. other children .. //
)->find($user->id);
// share to the view
View::share('user', $controller->user);
// ... other $controller property setting
return;
}
I am unsure as to whether this is best practice.
edit - A previously raised second issue been solved - the main question remains:
Is there a problem with this approach - what would be an equivalent way of moving these 20 or so variable assignments to a higher level.

Answer 1

You can get authorized user in controller using Laravel DI, simply your code should be something like this
YourControlle extends Controller
{
public function test(Request $request)
$user = $requset->user(); //use auth user
}

Answer 2

The best approach would be a helper (or multiple helpers, you can create a app\Helpers namespace for that) and have all your logic within it.
The Auth::user() will be accessible from that helper using the Auth Facade, and have your logic there.
An other simpler way is just extending your controllers from a custom base controller you make (which you're going to extend from Controller) and append a $user member to it with a protected visibility, and share it to the view, to be done with in the constructor or in a method to be called through parent::magicMethod()
EDIT
You can override the callAction method used by the controller class
/**
* Execute an action on the controller.
*
* #param string $method
* #param array $parameters
* #return \Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Response
*/
public function callAction($method, $parameters)
{
// insert your logic here
return call_user_func_array([$this, $method], $parameters);
}
The reason why you can't access the Auth via the constructor is because the session was not fired up yet. You can catch it when it does with this event listener :
Event::listen(Authenticated::class, function ($event) {
$this->user = $event->user;
});
not tested
A middleware with a closure would do the work too. Make it have your logic, and use it in all your controllers.