Laravel middleware 'except' rule not working

When assigning middleware to a group of routes, you may occasionally need to prevent the middleware from being applied to an individual route within the group. You may accomplish this using the withoutMiddleware method:

use App\Http\Middleware\CheckAge;

Route::middleware([CheckAge::class])->group(function () {
    Route::get('/', function () {
        //
    });

    Route::get('admin/profile', function () {
        //
    })->withoutMiddleware([CheckAge::class]);
});

for more information read documentation laravel middleware

You need to pass the method's name instead of the URI.

<?php
    
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
    
class MyController extends Controller {
    public function __construct() {
        $this->middleware('guest', ['except' => [
            'redirectToFacebook', 'handleFacebookCallback', 'handleFacebookUnlink'
        ]]);
    }
}

Since Laravel 5.3, you can use fluent interface to define middlewares on controllers, which seems cleaner than using multidimensional arrays.

<?php

$this->middleware('guest')->except('redirectToFacebook', 'handleFacebookCallback', 'handleFacebookUnlink');

If you are trying to follow the Laravel Documentation, an alternative solution to this is suggested by adding routes to the $except variable in the /Http/Middleware/VerifyCsrfToken.php file. The documentation says to add them like this:

'route/*'

But I found the only way to get it to work is by putting the routes to ignore like this:

'/route'

I solved this issue in my Middleware by adding this inExceptArray function. It's the same way VerifyCsrfToken handles the except array.

<?php

namespace App\Http\Middleware;

use Closure;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class MyMiddleware
{
    /**
     * Routes that should skip handle.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $except = [
        '/some/route',
    ];

    /**
     * Determine if the request has a URI that should pass through.
     *
     * @param Request $request
     * @return bool
     */
    protected function inExceptArray($request)
    {
        foreach ($this->except as $except) {
            if ($except !== '/') {
                $except = trim($except, '/');
            }

            if ($request->is($except)) {
                return true;
            }
        }

        return false;
    }

    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  Request  $request
     * @param Closure $next
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        // check user authed or API Key
        if (!$this->inExceptArray($request)) {
            // Process middleware checks and return if failed...
            if (true) {
              // Middleware failed, send back response
              return response()->json([
                'error' => true,
                'Message' => 'Failed Middleware check'
            ]); 
            }
        }
        // Middleware passed or in Except array
        return $next($request);
    }
}