Change Laravel config settings from the front end? - laravel

Question

I'm using Laravel 5.0. I need to be able to change the value of the session lifetime in config/session.php from the front end, making the value configurable to an admin user of my site.
In the docs I've read that you can get/set variables using the config helper function, like so:
config(['session.lifetime' => '60']);
config('session.lifetime'); // '60'
But it it only changes the configuration value for that request. How do I persist this configuration, making it work across all requests?

Answer 1

This answer may be dumb, try to session flash an object that has the changes. Then implant a middleware that takes what is flashed in session and redo the config changes, then reflash.
$whatever_to_change = ['session.lifetime' => '60'];
session()->flash('changes', $whatever_to_change);
config($whatever_to_change);
In a middleware:
$from_flash = session()->get('changes');
config($whatever_to_change);
session()->keep(['changes']);
Then use this middleware in your other routes. I think this may not work if you want to change session driver.

Answer 2

I would recommend implementing a custom session driver that reads the lifetime value out of the database.
It is pretty easy and you'll only have to override the GC (garbage collection) method, as well as creating a database table to store this value.
I've done it in the past to make soft-deleting database sessions for analytics purposes. Let me know if you need any code snippets to proceed.
Edit: with code, my problem was slightly different, so I have edited in some key components but this doesn't pretend to be a complete solution:
I created a folder called Library\Session under app to store this new SessionHandler in:
<?php
namespace App\Library\Session;
use DB;
class DynamicallyConfiguredDatabaseSessionHandler extends \Illuminate\Session\DatabaseSessionHandler
{
/**
* {#inheritdoc}
*/
public function read($sessionId)
{
$session = (object) $this->getQuery()->find($sessionId);
if (isset($session->payload)) {
$this->exists = true;
return base64_decode($session->payload);
}
}
/**
* {#inheritdoc}
*/
public function write($sessionId, $data)
{
if ($this->exists) {
$this->getQuery()->where('id', $sessionId)->update([
'payload' => base64_encode($data), 'last_activity' => time(),
]);
} else {
$this->getQuery()->insert([
'id' => $sessionId, 'payload' => base64_encode($data), 'last_activity' => time()
]);
}
$this->exists = true;
}
/**
* {#inheritdoc}
*/
public function destroy($sessionId)
{
$this->getQuery()->where('id', $sessionId)->delete();
}
/**
* {#inheritdoc}
*/
public function gc($lifetime)
{
$dynamic_lifetime = DB::select('select lifetime from config limit 1');
$this->getQuery()->where('last_activity', '<=', time() - $dynamic_lifetime)->delete();
}
}
Then in config/session.php set 'driver' => 'dynamically_configured_database'
Then in App\Providers\AppServiceProvider use this boot() method:
public function boot()
{
//This is seriously the only way to modify how sessions work
\Session::extend('dynamically_configured_database', function() {
$connection = $this->app['config']['session.connection'];
$connection = $this->app['db']->connection($connection);
$table = $this->app['config']['session.table'];
return new \App\Library\Session\DynamicallyConfiguredDatabaseSessionHandler($connection, $table);
});
}
To ensure that the session is destroyed at the end of the specified period every time, change the garbage collection lottery odds in session.php like so:
'lottery' => [1, 1],
Prepare for this to take a little time, and I would love to hear your lessons learned about easier ways to add in custom database drivers, but once I got it working it hasn't had any problems yet.