How to have global $user variable in Laravel 5.2? - authentication

Question

Context
Laravel ships with two authentication controllers out of the box, which are located in the App\Http\Controllers\Auth namespace.
...
You may access the authenticated user via the Auth facade: $user = Auth::user();
Reference: Laravel 5.2 Documentation
I'm able to log in successfully and I'm redirected to the correct place as defined in the AuthController.php, but now I need access to the $user object in most of my views such as for checking the user's information, access priveleges, etc.
Problem
How do I properly provide access to the $user variable on all of my views?

Answer 1

How other people have been doing it
User imJohnBen of Laracast asked how a Laravel 5 service provider can be used to share view variables. He later shares how he was able to use the existing ComposerServiceProvider and added a GlobalComposer to be able to share variables on all the views.
I followed his answer but there was a missing step. I couldn't contribute to the Laracast forums, thus leading to the creation of this StackOverflow question.
The Laravel version I'm using here is Laravel 5.2.*.
Answer
Find the existing ComposerServiceProvider class. I found mine in vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Providers/ComposerServiceProvider.php.
Import/reference the ViewFactory dependency at the top of the file.
use Illuminate\Contracts\View\Factory as ViewFactory;
Add the boot method, or modify it if it exists already. Make sure the ViewFactory was injected (add it as a parameter in the boot function):
/**
* Register bindings in the container.
*
* #return void
*/
public function boot(ViewFactory $view)
{
$view->composer('*', 'App\Http\ViewComposers\GlobalComposer');
}
Make a ViewComposers folder in your app/Http folder.
Make a GlobalComposer.php file in the ViewComposers folder, containing the following:
<?php
namespace App\Http\ViewComposers;
use Illuminate\Contracts\View\View;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;
class GlobalComposer {
/**
* Bind data to the view.
*
* #param View $view
* #return void
*/
public function compose(View $view)
{
$view->with('user', Auth::user());
}
}
(The missing step) Finally, make sure everything is wired up by going to your config/app.php file and making sure that ComposerServiceProvider is in your providers list.
'providers' = [
/*
* Laravel Framework Service Providers...
*/
Illuminate\Auth\AuthServiceProvider::class,
Illuminate\Broadcasting\BroadcastServiceProvider::class,
// etc...
Illuminate\Foundation\Providers\ComposerServiceProvider::class,
]
Afterwards, the $user variable and any other variables you define in the GlobalComposer will be accessible in any of the views you render.