I have a table called admission and in this table I have two columns to indicate record locking. locked_by that contains the user id when locked and locked_at which holds the timestamp for when the record was locked.

Last one is probably not applicable here.

Okay so when my session expires, I would like to release the record that is locked by THIS user.
This is how I aproached it.

API

Route::group(['middleware' => ['auth:sanctum', 'updateLastActive']], function () {

updateLastActive.php

class UpdateLastActive
{
    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  Closure(IlluminateHttpRequest): (SymfonyComponentHttpFoundationResponse)  $next
     */
    public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next): Response
    {
        if (Auth::check()) {
            $user = Auth::user();
            $sessionLifetime = config('session.lifetime'); // in minutes
            $cutoffTime = Carbon::now()->subMinutes($sessionLifetime);

            // Check if the user's session is expired
            if ($user->last_active < $cutoffTime) {
                // Unlock any records locked by this user
                AppModelsAdmission::where('locked_by', $user->id)->update(['locked_by' => null]);

                // Optionally log out the user
                Auth::logout();

                // Redirect to the login page or show a session expired message
                return redirect()->route('login')->withErrors(['message' => 'Your session has expired due to inactivity.']);
            }

            // Update the last active timestamp if the session is still valid
            $user->update(['last_active' => now()]);
        }

        return $next($request);

    }
}

But it never releases the record. I get logged out on session expiry, but locked_by never gets cleard.