I was working on adding localization to my Laravel 11 project, and I created a middleware called SetLocale that consists of the codebase similar to below:

public function handle(Request $request, Closure $next): Response
    {
        App::setLocale(session()->get('locale'));
        return $next($request);
    }

I added it to my bootstrap/app.php file like this:

return Application::configure(basePath: dirname(__DIR__))
    ->withRouting(
        web: __DIR__ . '/../routes/web.php',
        commands: __DIR__ . '/../routes/console.php',
        health: '/up',
    )
    ->withMiddleware(function (Middleware $middleware) {
        $middleware->append(SetLocale::class);
    })
    ->withExceptions(function (Exceptions $exceptions) {
        //
    })->create();

In my LocalizationController, I set the session like this:

public function setLocalization(string $locale): RedirectResponse
{
    session()->put('locale', $locale);
    App::setLocale($locale);
    return back();
}

My route in web.php looks like this:

Route::get('/locale/{locale}', [LocalizationController::class, 'setLocalization'])->name('locale.switch');

Here’s what I tried:

1. Used the Session facade throughout the codebase, but it didn’t work.
2. Used back()->with('locale', $locale); when returning in the setLocalization() function in the LocalizationController, but it didn’t work.
3. Tried various changes, but I couldn’t retrieve the ‘locale’ session data in my middleware.

Unfortunately, it’s not working as expected.

The only way I got it to work was by wrapping the middleware around the route like this:

Route::prefix('localization')->middleware([SetLocale::class])->group(function() {
   Route::get('/locale/{locale}', [LocalizationController::class, 'setLocalization'])->name('locale.switch');
});

Is my use of global middleware incorrect, or did Laravel change how it handles sessions for global middleware?

Just an FYI, Laravel has now moved its middleware to elsewhere. Now it’s a clean file located in the bootstrap/app.php file.

Thanks for your help.