How to "Refresh" the User object in Laravel? - laravel

Question

In Laravel you can do this:
$user = Auth::user();
Problem is, if I do changes on items on that object, it will give me what was there before my changes. How do I refresh the object to get the latest values? I.e. To force it to get the latest values from the DB?

Answer 1

You can update the cache object like this.
Auth::setUser($user);
for Example
$user = User::find(Auth::user()->id);
$user->name = 'New Name';
$user->save();
Auth::setUser($user);
log::error(Auth::user()->name)); // Will be 'NEW Name'

Answer 2

[This answer is more appropriate for newer versions of Laravel (namely Laravel 5)]
On the first call of Auth::user(), it will fetch the results from the database and store it in a variable.
But on subsequent calls it will fetch the results from the variable.
This is seen from the following code in the framemwork:
public function user()
{
...
// If we've already retrieved the user for the current request we can just
// return it back immediately. We do not want to fetch the user data on
// every call to this method because that would be tremendously slow.
if (! is_null($this->user)) {
return $this->user;
}
...
}
Now if we make changes on the model, the changes will automatically be reflected on the object. It will NOT contain the old values. Therefore there is usually no need to re-fetch the data from the database.
However, there are certain rare circumstances where re-fetching the data from the database would be useful (e.g. making sure the database applies it's default values, or if changes have been made to the model by another request). To do this run the fresh() method like so:
Auth::user()->fresh()

Answer 3

Laravel does do that for you, HOWEVER, you will not see that update reflected in Auth::user() during that same request. From /Illuminate/Auth/Guard.php (located just above the code that Antonio mentions in his answer):
// If we have already retrieved the user for the current request we can just
// return it back immediately. We do not want to pull the user data every
// request into the method because that would tremendously slow an app.
if ( ! is_null($this->user))
{
return $this->user;
}
So if you were trying to change the users name from 'Old Name' to 'New Name':
$user = User::find(Auth::user()->id);
$user->name = 'New Name';
$user->save();
And later in the same request you try getting the name by checking Auth::user()->name, its going to give you 'Old Name'
log::error(Auth::user()->name)); // Will be 'Old Name'

Answer 4

A little late to the party, but this worked for me:
Auth::user()->update(array('name' => 'NewName'));

Answer 5

Laravel already does that for you. Every time you do Auth::user(), Laravel does
// First we will try to load the user using the identifier in the session if
// one exists. Otherwise we will check for a "remember me" cookie in this
// request, and if one exists, attempt to retrieve the user using that.
$user = null;
if ( ! is_null($id))
{
$user = $this->provider->retrieveByID($id);
}
It nulls the current user and if it is logged, retrieve it again using the logged id stored in the session.
If it's not working as it should, you have something else in your code, which we are not seeing here, caching that user for you.