Setting Cookie in Laravel Custom Middleware - laravel

Question

I want to set a cookie in a custom Laravel middleware. The idea is to set the cookie value any time a user visits my website through any landing page.
So what I did was I created a middleware named UUIDMiddleware. I am using this middleware along with web middleware in my routes. Below is its code from the middleware.
if($request->hasCookie('uuid'))
{
return $next($request);
}
else
{
$uuid = Uuid::generate();
$response = new Response();
return $response->withCookie(cookie()->forever('uuid', $uuid));
}
As you can see I am checking if cookie exists. If not, I am passing control to next request.
The problem is when setting a cookie using return $response, I cannot pass control to next request. How do I resolve this?
What happens in this case is if a cookie is not set, it sets a cookie and a blank screen shows up. If I refresh, I see the website with a cookie set.
There has to be a way to set cookie using middleware in the right way. How do I do it?

Answer 1

The response object in middleware is returned by the $next closure, so you could do something like this:
if($request->hasCookie('uuid')) {
return $next($request);
}
$uuid = Uuid::generate();
return $next($request)
->withCookie(cookie()->forever('uuid', $uuid));

Answer 2

If you're using Laravel 5.8 and like me you want a solution that allows you set the expiration time of the cookie instead of setting it to forever, you could also do something like this in the middleware:
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
$time = time() + 60 * 60 * 24; //One day
$res = $next($request);
return $res->cookie('cookie_name', $cookieValue, $time, "/");
}
This would set the cookie when the controller is done with the request and is returning a response.