Laravel 5: Accessing and Manipulating Session Data With session

The session function can be used to resolve the "\Illuminate\Session\SessionManager" instance from the service container, retrieve session values, and even set new session values. These different behaviors are controlled by the types, and number, of arguments supplied to the function call.

#Signature

The signature of the session function is:

 1function session();
 2 
 3function session([
 4    $key,
 5    $value = null
 6]);
 7 
 8function session(
 9    $key = null,
10    $default = null
11);

#Returning an Instance of "\Illuminate\Session\SessionManager"

To return an instance of the "\Illuminate\Session\SessionManager" class, set the $key parameter to null. If the $key parameter is set to null, the $default parameter is completely ignored.

1// Get the SessionManager instance.
2$sessionManager = session();

#Setting a Session Value

The session function allows setting session values directly by passing in an array of key/value pairs. The following example demonstrates this:

1// Settings two session values 'test' and 'test2'
2session([
3    'test'  => 'A test message',
4    'test2' => 'Another test message'
5]);

Setting single session values is also possible:

1// Setting a single session value.
2session()->put('test3', 'Yet another test message');

#Retrieving a Session Value

Values can be retrieved with the session function by supplying a $key. To retrieve the test value from the earlier example the function call would look like so:

1// Retrieving the 'test' value.
2$value = session('test');

It is possible that a session value does not exist. When this is the case, the internal session mechanisms will return null. This can be overridden by supplying a value for the $default parameter:

1// Retrieving a value that does not exist.
2$valueThatDoesNotExist = session('does_not_exist', 'A default value');

In the above example the value of $valueThatDoesNotExit would be A default value.

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