Are you getting the Laravel error 419 session expired during a post request?

This occurs due to CSRF token verification failure, misconfigured cache, permissions, improper session settings, etc.

At Bobcares, we fix Laravel errors, as a part of our Server Management Services.

Today, let’s have a look into the session expired error. We’ll also see how our Support Engineers fix it.

Laravel Error: 419 session expired

Laravel is a web development framework. It allows customizing configuration. And the user/developer can create a .env file for this purpose.

By default, Laravel is an HTTP driven application. The session provides ways to store information. The available options are files, cookie, database, Memcached or Redis, and array.

This error shows up when a user submits a post request. The error in front-end appears as,

And, in the command line, the error appears as,

419 Sorry, your session has expired. Please refresh and try again.

Many reasons can lead to session expired error. The most obvious reasons are CSRF token failure, cache, permissions, improper session settings.

How we fix the Laravel error 419 session expired?

Our Support Engineers with expertise over a decade in Server Administration fixes Laravel errors. Let’s see the common causes and how we fix it.

1. CSRF token verification failure

The most common reason for the 419 error is CSRF token failure. Cross-site request forgery token is a unique, encrypted value generated by the server.

Laravel generates a CSRF token for each user session. The token verifies the user by requesting the application.

So always include a CSRF token in the HTML form to validate the user request.

The VerifyCsrfToken middleware automatically crosses checks the token in the request to the token stored in the session.

In addition to CSRF token verification, the VerifyCsrfToken middleware also checks the X-CSRF-TOKEN request header.

So, we store the token in the HTML meta tag. Then a library like jQuery can automatically add a token to all request headers. Therefore to fix the CSRF token failure we check the token in the application.

2. Session expired error due to cache

Sometimes, the cache can also lead to session expired error in front-end. This can be both the server cache and browser cache. So, our Support Engineers clear the server cache using

php artisan cache:clear

If this does not fix the error, we ask the customer to clear the browser cache. Many times this fixes the error.

3. Laravel file and folder permissions

Similarly, improper file or folder permission can also lead to errors. Usually, web servers need write-permissions on the Laravel folders storage and vendor. Also, session storage needs write-permission. So, our Support Engineers give permissions as,

chmod -R 755 storage

chmod -R 755 vendor

chmod -R 644 bootstrap/caches

Mostly, this fixes the error.

4. Laravel session setting

Last but not least, session settings can also cause a 419 error. The app/config/session.php is the session config file. Our Experts check the session settings in this file. Hence we correct if there is an error. We always check for a few important parameters – domain and secure.

'domain' => env('SESSION_DOMAIN', null),
'secure' => env('SESSION_SECURE_COOKIE', false), // in case of cookie

These step by step approach fixes the error and make Laravel working again.

[Need assistance in fixing Laravel errors? – Our Experts are available 24/7.]

Conclusion

In short, the Laravel error 419 session expired occur due to many reasons like CSRF token failure, wrong cache, permissions, improper session settings, etc. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers fix this error.