Laravel authenticated user logout error - laravel

Question

tried to implement a simple user register/login function on my site using the laravel default controllers (auth/password), but as soon as I login, the class RedirectIfAuthenticated handle function prevents all access to auth url's, thus I cannot logout anymore. Is there a bug and I need to write an exception on the handle function or have I missed something?
Here is how the class looks like by default:
class RedirectIfAuthenticated
{
/**
* Handle an incoming request.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #param \Closure $next
* #param string|null $guard
* #return mixed
*/
public function handle($request, Closure $next, $guard = null)
{
//dd($next($request));
if (Auth::guard($guard)->check()) {
return redirect('/articles');
}
return $next($request);
}
}

Answer 1

The AuthController's constructor should look similar to this:
public function __construct()
{
$this->middleware('guest', ['except' => 'logout']);
}
The guest middleware is handled by the RedirectIfAuthenticated class and, in order to have the logout functionality working, you should choose one:
call the logout method from your AuthController.
call whichever method you use for logout and exclude it in AuthController's constructor:
public function __construct()
{
$this->middleware('guest', ['except' => '<whichever_method>']);
}

Answer 2

For potentially more-advanced reasons and needs, I will show a different idea.
Inside any middleware, a person could implement their own except list. Here is a reference:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Middleware;
use Closure;
class CustomThing
protected $except = [
'api/logout',
'api/refresh',
];
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
foreach ($this->except as $excluded_route) {
if ($request->path() === $excluded_route) {
\Log::debug("Skipping $excluded_route in this middleware...");
return $next($request);
}
}
\Log::debug('Doing middleware stuff... '. $request->url());
}
}
I will leave it up to imagination to extend that to support other types of URLs. For example, investigate matchers such as $request->url(), $request->fullUrl(), and $request->is('admin/*').
A person could investigate the vendor code for the VerifyCsrfToken middleware and make their custom one support something like this:
protected $except = [
'api/logout',
'api/refresh',
'foo/*',
'http://www.external.com/links',
];
If you want it to be a reuseable solution, make that matching algorithm a Trait and import it into any middleware you want to exclude routes from.