Using a custom middleware redirects me to /home, even if middleware is empty in Laravel

Question

I'm pretty out of any ideas right now.

The case is: I have a route for an API-endpoint (working fine, responding JSON etc.).

If I now apply the built-in 'auth' middleware to the route, I'm redirected ALWAYS to the /home route. Looks like I'm doing sth. wrong with the auth? I think wrong, because:

This curious redirect also kicks in, if I don't use 'auth' but a custom middleware, that contains NOTHING but

public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
    print "WTF";
    throw new AuthenticationException('Unauthenticated.');
}

[the print and the Exception are never thrown! I'm landing again without errors at /home.]

Not all middleware is producing this error: For example, 'auth.basic' and 'web' are just working fine with this route.

I also applied 'web' and my own middleware both to the route according to some results I found, that said that using 'web' solved similar problems for them, but guess what, nothing changed.

TL:DR: If I use my own middleware or 'auth' I'm getting redirected, BEFORE the middleware itself is executed.

Update: After fiddling around with the code and the great tipp from mnies, I found this very curious Bug:

If I just uncomment AuthenticationException, suddenly my code is working as intended. It may be that loading the Exception-Class calls RedirectIfAuthenticated Middleware?! - which is definitely called!

The easy solution is now, using a different Exception for my custom middleware, but the Problem is that the default 'auth'-MW is also using this Exception and so causing the same Bug.

Remember: I am not using other middleware than just this own one, the bug seems really loading the Exception, like WTF?

So I still need help why this is happening!

Bug: using

throw new AuthenticationException('Unauthenticated.', []);

causes 'guest'-MW (RedirectIfAuthenticated) being called instead of intended MW-stack! (nothing of the original MW-stack is being executed, no matter the order.

Update 2: It seems that RedirectIfAuthenticated is thrown only because I got redirected before to the /login route (and from there as described to /home through it), but that doesn't change the issue that this random redirect occurs.

[I'm trying atm to reproduce this Bug in a fresh installation]

Update 3: I was not able to reproduce the bug in a fresh installation with Laravel 5.4.19.... Trying to compare both installations now. D:

Using Laravel 5.3.30.

Some of my code for context:

Route:

Route::get('/admin/user/get', ['middleware' => ['simpleauth', 'web'], 'uses' => 'UserEditAdmin\Controllers\Controller@get']);

Custom middleware:

class SimpleAuth
{

    public function __construct(){}

    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
     * @param  \Closure $next
     * @return mixed
     * @throws AuthenticationException
     */
    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        print "WTF";
        throw new AuthenticationException('Unauthenticated.');
    }
}

'web' from Kernel.php:

protected $middlewareGroups = [
    'web' => [
        \App\Http\Middleware\EncryptCookies::class,

     \Illuminate\Cookie\Middleware\AddQueuedCookiesToResponse::class,
        \Illuminate\Session\Middleware\StartSession::class,
        \Illuminate\View\Middleware\ShareErrorsFromSession::class,
        \App\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken::class,
        \Illuminate\Routing\Middleware\SubstituteBindings::class,
    ],

    'api' => [
        'throttle:60,1',
        'bindings',
    ],
];

It would be great if you could put a minimal example of this problem on Github. — mniess

mniess mniess · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-27T11:35:45

Have a look at your \App\Http\Kernel.php. It looks like you're always calling the \App\Http\Middleware\RedirectIfAuthenticated middleware (aliased to guest). It you want to debug, you could just throw an exception in that middleware to get a stacktrace of what is called when.

Using a custom middleware redirects me to /home, even if middleware is empty in Laravel

1 Answers