How to bind user object to request in a middleware

This is a very useful question. I was having trouble with the selected solution though. In my middleware I could successfully see $request->user(), however it was failing when using gates, namely in the Access/Gate class:

protected function raw($ability, $arguments = [])
{
    if (! $user = $this->resolveUser()) {
        return false;
    }

    // ...

This function is always returning false :/

So I did it as suggested here (http://laravel-recipes.com/recipes/230/setting-the-currently-authenticated-user), namely:

$usr = new User();
$usr->setAttribute('id', $request->user_id);
Auth::setUser($usr);

And it appears to be working without using setUserResolver().

Thanks

You could use the auth system if that model implements the right interface, to log them in for the request.

Auth uses a rebinder to assign the userResolver on request. (So you get $request->user() from it). Check Illuminate\Auth\AuthServiceProvider@registerRequestRebindHandler to see how its setting that resolver.

$request->setUserResolver(....)

I don't have a copy of Spark to try this & ensure what I'm doing is correct for you, but I think this will help:

1) An assumption - I believe you are saying that yes, this line will get you the user you want:

$user = $team->User()->first();

and you merely want to bind it to the request so that you can access this user later in your app via:

$request->user()

2) If this is true, then all I did was simplify the code you provided to add:

$request->merge(['user' => $user ]);

//add this
$request->setUserResolver(function () use ($user) {
    return $user;
});

// if you dump() you can now see the $request has it
dump($request->user());

return $next($request);

I also $request->user() in the route closure, and it is there.

The app rebinding was a little strange to me, and didn't seem necessary. I'm not sure that anything would really need this for what you are doing.