Hey Artisan,

Today, I will justify to you how can check online users in laravel 8 application. So we can easily check the laravel check if a user is online or not. I will learn about how to recognize a user is online or not and store last seen data.

So, we will integrate the new column "last_seen" in the users table and create new middleware for a web that will check if the user login then it will update the last_seen time and add the key for online in the cache, so we can check user online or not using that. so just follow below steps.

Here, I will give you a full example of how can check laravel to get all logged-in users in laravel 8 so follow my all steps.

In this step, You can install laravel fresh app. So open a terminal and put the bellow command.

composer create-project --prefer-dist laravel/laravel Status

After successfully install laravel app thenafter configure databse setup. We will open ".env" file and change the database name, username and password in the env file.

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=Enter_Your_Database_Name
DB_USERNAME=Enter_Your_Database_Username
DB_PASSWORD=Enter_Your_Database_Password

Now, in this step, we will create auth scaffold command to create login, register and dashboard. so run following commands:

composer require laravel/ui

After, that you can run following command and check ui commands info.

php artisan ui --help

Next, You can use the following commands for creating auth:

Using Bootstrap:

php artisan ui bootstrap --auth

npm install

npm run dev

So after the next step You can add a column in the user table So Let's Open the terminal and run the bellow command:

php artisan make:migration add_last_seen_to_users_table --table=users	

Run successfully above command after adding column into the user table. open migration file and put below code.

<?php

use Illuminate\Database\Migrations\Migration;
use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Schema;

class AddLastSeenToUsersTable extends Migration
{
    /**
     * Run the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function up()
    {
        Schema::table('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->timestamp('last_seen')->nullable();
        });
    }

    /**
     * Reverse the migrations.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function down()
    {
        Schema::table('users', function (Blueprint $table) {
            $table->timestamp('last_seen');
        });
    }
}

Put above code after run bellow command.

php artian migrate

Now,we will add this "last_seen" in User model.

<?php
  
namespace App\Models;
  
use Illuminate\Contracts\Auth\MustVerifyEmail;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Factories\HasFactory;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Illuminate\Notifications\Notifiable;
  
class User extends Authenticatable
{
    use HasFactory, Notifiable;
    /**
     * The attributes that are mass assignable.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $fillable = [
        'name', 'email', 'password', 'last_seen'
    ];
  
    /**
     * The attributes that should be hidden for arrays.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $hidden = [
        'password', 'remember_token',
    ];
  
    /**
     * The attributes that should be cast to native types.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $casts = [
        'email_verified_at' => 'datetime',
    ];
}

After successfully run migration next step we needed to create custom middleware as UserActivity using bellow command.

php artisan make:middleware UserActivity

Now open the middleware UserActivity.php file and paste bellow code in middleware file:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Middleware;

use Closure;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\User;
use Auth;
use Cache;

class UserActivity
{
    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @param  \Closure  $next
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next)
    {
        if (Auth::check()) {
            $expire = now()->addMinutes(2); /* keep online for 2 min */
            Cache::put('user-is-online-' .Auth::user()->id,true,$expire);

            /* last seen */
            User::where('id',Auth::user()->id)->update(['last_seen' => now()]);

        }
        return $next($request);
    }
}

In this step We have to add middleware to kernel file.Open kernel.php file and add middleware.

protected $middlewareGroups = [
    'web' => [
        \App\Http\Middleware\EncryptCookies::class,
        \Illuminate\Cookie\Middleware\AddQueuedCookiesToResponse::class,
        \Illuminate\Session\Middleware\StartSession::class,
        // \Illuminate\Session\Middleware\AuthenticateSession::class,
        \Illuminate\View\Middleware\ShareErrorsFromSession::class,
        \App\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken::class,
        \Illuminate\Routing\Middleware\SubstituteBindings::class,
        \App\Http\Middleware\UserActivity::class,
    ],

    'api' => [
        'throttle:api',
        \Illuminate\Routing\Middleware\SubstituteBindings::class,
    ],
];

In this step We have to add new route in route file Open web.php file add new route.

<?php

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;
use App\Http\Controllers\UserController;

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Web Routes
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Here is where you can register web routes for your application. These
| routes are loaded by the RouteServiceProvider within a group which
| contains the "web" middleware group. Now create something great!
|
*/

Route::get('online-user', [UserController::class, 'index']);

In this step, we should need create new controller as UserController. So put bellow code.

<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\User;

class UserController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Write Your Code..
     *
     * @return string
    */
    public function index()
    {
        $users = User::select('*')
                        ->whereNotNull('last_seen')        
                        ->orderBy('last_seen','DESC')
                        ->paginate(10);

        return view('users', compact('users'));
    }    
}

In this step, we should create blade file as users.blade.php and paste the bellow code into blade file.

@extends('layouts.app')
  
@section('content')
<div class="container">
    <h4>Laravel 8 - How To Get Online Users- MyWebtuts.com</h4>
  
    <table class="table table-bordered data-table">
        <thead>
            <tr>
                <th>No</th>
                <th>Name</th>
                <th>Email</th>
                <th>Last Seen</th>
                <th>Status</th>
            </tr>
        </thead>
        <tbody>
            @foreach($users as $user)
                <tr>
                    <td>{{ $user->id }}</td>
                    <td>{{ $user->name }}</td>
                    <td>{{ $user->email }}</td>
                    <td>
                        {{ Carbon\Carbon::parse($user->last_seen)->diffForHumans() }}
                    </td>
                    <td>
                        @if(Cache::has('user-is-online-' . $user->id))
                            <span class="badge badge-success">Online</span>
                        @else
                            <span class="badge badge-danger">Offline</span>
                        @endif
                    </td>
                </tr>
            @endforeach
        </tbody>
    </table>
</div>
@endsection

Now we are ready to run our example so run bellow command for quick run:

php artisan serve

Now you can open bellow URL on your browser:

http://localhost:8000/online-user

It will help you...