Laravel, get currently logged-in users - authentication

Question

I want to display a list of currently logged-in users in an app. I want to use Laravel Auth method. I'm looking at the API and I cannot find anything like it.
I would probably need to loop through the sessions store and then match it to a user ID. Am I right?
UPDATE: Forgot to mention, I'm storing sessions in the DB.

Answer 1

"Currently logged in" is something you can't do with plain old sessions. Let me explain why:
A session is a bunch of data stored at server side which is assigned to an user through a cookie. That cookie remains on user browser and so it keeps the session active. Sessions can stay "alive" months without the user even logging in.
But, it's possible to store sessions on database.
As you can see, Laravel keeps a field called last_activity and, through that field, you should be able to retrieve all sessions that had activity within the last 15 minutes (or something else, you call it).
When your retrieve those records, the data field is a serialized representation of session data. You can unserialize($session_record->data) and retrieve the user id.
Depending on your Auth driver, session's user id may have different names:
For eloquent driver, it should be eloquent_login.
For fluent driver fluent_login.
For your Custom\AuthClass, it should be called custom_authclass_login.

Answer 2

Assume that all http requests from logged in users are passing auth middleware, we can override terminate function like following:
public function terminate($request, $response)
{
Auth::user()->save();
}
Then a query like User::where('updated_at', '>', Carbon::now()->subMinutes(12))->get(); will bring all logged in user, where 12 is the lifetime of session.
Of course, for real time, we should use ajax calls every 5 seconds or websockets via pusher or other.

Answer 3

First create a table where the logged in user's id will be inserted
Schema::create('active_users', function(Blueprint $table)
{
$table->increments('id')->unsigned();
$table->integer('user_id')->unsigned();
$table->foreign('user_id')->references('id')->on('users')
->onUpdate('cascade')->onDelete('cascade');
$table->timestamps();
});
Then in yourcontroller insert data while logging in
if (Auth::attempt($credentials)) {
DB::table('active_users')->insert(array('user_id' => Auth::id()));
}
and delete the data while logging out
DB::table('active_users')->where('user_id', '=', Auth::id())->delete();
Print the online users list in your view
<ul><strong>Online Users</strong>
<?php $online_users = DB::table('active_users')->where('user_id','!=',Auth::id())->get(); ?>
#foreach($online_users as $online_user)
<li>{{User::find($online_user->user_id)->first_name}}</li>
#endforeach
</ul>