What is the session system in Laravel?
Why Interviewers Ask This
Foundational questions like this help interviewers calibrate the rest of the interview. A confident, accurate answer signals that you have solid Laravel basics — a prerequisite for any developer role.
Answer
Laravel provides a unified API for various session backends. Configure the driver in .env: SESSION_DRIVER=database (or file, redis, memcached, cookie, array). Store data: session()->put("key", "value") or $request->session()->put(...). Retrieve: session("key", "default"). Flash data (available only for next request — great for success messages): session()->flash("status", "Profile updated!"). Retrieve and delete: session()->pull("key"). Delete: session()->forget("key"). Clear all: session()->flush(). The all() method returns all session data. Increment/decrement: session()->increment("views"). Use Redis for sessions in production for performance and to support multiple servers.
Pro Tip
Demonstrate both theoretical understanding and practical experience. Say what it is, then give an example of how you actually used it in a Laravel codebase.