Laravel 5 session not persisting after user is logged in

# Laravel 5 Session Persistence Nightmare: Why Logged-In Status Disappears I’ve encountered a frustrating, yet common, issue when working with session management in older Laravel applications, particularly concerning user authentication. The problem is simple on the surface—the logged-in status vanishes after a redirect or page refresh—but digging into the underlying mechanics of `Session::` reveals deeper architectural considerations. If you are grappling with persistent state loss after logging in in a Laravel 5 application, you are likely fighting against how Laravel handles session data versus how authentication states should be managed within the framework. Let’s break down why this happens and how to fix it using best practices. ## Understanding the Session Lifecycle in Laravel The core of your issue lies in the interaction between your custom login logic, the session driver configuration (`config/session.php`), and the way Laravel expects authenticated state to be maintained. When you use `Session::all()`, you are inspecting raw data stored by the chosen driver (file, database, etc.). Your observation that the session array changes post-login suggests that while the initial login request successfully writes *something* to the session, subsequent requests—especially those handled by route redirects—are not correctly re-establishing or reading the necessary state. The configuration you provided for `config/session.php` looks standard: ```php return [ 'driver' => env('SESSION