How can I prevent Laravel from renewing the session during status checks?

One common workaround is to avoid “touching” the session in a way that updates its last activity. In other words, instead of booting the session (via the StartSession middleware) or calling any methods on the session instance (which automatically renew the session), you can read the session ID directly from the cookie and then query the database. That way you’re not “using” Laravel’s session instance, which is what causes the renewal.

For example, you can update your route like this:

PHPCopied
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Auth;

Route::get('/session-status', function (Request $request) {
    // Get the session cookie directly (prevents initializing the session)
    $sessionId = $request->cookie(config('session.cookie'));

    // Check if the user is authenticated by any alternative method you have, if needed.
    // (If you rely on Auth::check(), consider that the web middleware might be re‐starting the session.)
    if (!Auth::check()) {
        return response()->json(['session_expired' => true], 401);
    }

    // Use the session ID from the cookie to fetch session info from the DB WITHOUT initializing the session.
    $session = DB::table('sessions')
        ->select('last_activity')
        ->where('id', $sessionId)
        ->first();

    if ($session) {
        $sessionLifetime = config('session.lifetime') * 60;
        $sessionAge = now()->timestamp - $session->last_activity;

        if ($sessionAge > $sessionLifetime) {
            return response()->json(['session_expired' => true], 401);
        }
    }

    return response()->json(['session_expired' => false]);
})->withoutMiddleware([\Illuminate\Session\Middleware\StartSession::class]);

A few important points:

1. Bypassing the Session Middleware:
   In the above example the withoutMiddleware call tells Laravel not to run the StartSession middleware for this route. This prevents Laravel from re–touching the session (and thus updating its last activity on every check).

2. Directly Reading the Cookie:
   By getting the session ID from the cookie (instead of the session instance via $request->session()->getId()), you avoid triggering the session handler that renews the session.

3. Authentication Check:
   If you are using the session for authentication (via the web guard), disabling the session middleware might interfere with Auth::check(). In that case you might need to consider a different approach for authentication (for example, using a stateless token check for the session–status route) or even dispatching your own check on the session record.

4. Impact on Auth:
   If you absolutely need to use session–based authentication in that route, then you may consider creating a custom middleware that calls the session handler in “read-only” mode or, at a minimum, conditionally skips the session renewal logic for this route.

By reading the session directly from the cookie and then querying the sessions table, you prevent the “drip” effect that keeps the session alive by updating its last activity. This way your frontend check (using your axios call) will correctly report if the session has expired—even if the user is idle—without inadvertently keeping the session active.

This approach is a trade–off: you bypass some conveniences of Laravel’s session management (and possibly authentication) for this status check. Adjust it to best fit your application’s design.