Using Laravel 5.2, and using a middleware, I need to remove a certain part from the URI of the request before it gets dispatched. More specifically, in a url like "http://somewebsite.com/en/company/about", I want to remove the "/en/" part from it.
This is the way I am doing it:
...
class LanguageMiddleware
{
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
//echo("ORIGINAL PATH: " . $request->path()); //notice this line
//duplicate the request
$dupRequest = $request->duplicate();
//get the language part
$lang = $dupRequest->segment(1);
//set the lang in the session
$_SESSION['lang'] = $lang;
//now remove the language part from the URI
$newpath = str_replace($lang, '', $dupRequest->path());
//set the new URI
$request->server->set('REQUEST_URI', $newpath);
echo("FINAL PATH: " . $request->path());
echo("LANGUAGE: " . $lang);
$response = $next($request);
return $response;
}//end function
}//end class
This code is working fine - when the original URI is "en/company/about", the resulting URI is indeed "company/about". My issue is this: notice that the line where I echo the ORIGINAL PATH is commented (line 8). This is done on purpose. If I uncomment this line, the code is not working; when the original URI is "en/company/about", the resulting URI is still "en/company/about".
I can only reach two conclusions from this: Either sending output before manipulating the request is somehow the culprit (tested - this is not the case), or calling the $request->path() method to get the URI has something to do with this. Although in production I will never need to echo the URI of course, and while this is only for debugging purposes, I still need to know why this is happening. I only want to get the URI of the request. What am I missing here?
Sidenote: The code originated from the first answer to this post: https://laracasts.com/discuss/channels/general-discussion/l5-whats-the-proper-way-to-create-new-request-in-middleware?page=1