Strange bug in Laravel 13 & laracasts/flash v3.2.5

[jonnott]

Something has happened with these new versions which makes the session storage behave differently.

Using the package's own message.blade.php partial causes an error, because the value returned from session('flash_notification') is different.

Before:

After:

The error is "Call to a member function toArray() on array (View: /Users/jonnott/Projects/Fusion/git/laravel/vendor/laracasts/flash/src/views/message.blade.php)"

This is because it's now already an array.

I don't know if the change has happened in this package or Laravel itself, but the only change here seems to have been the laravel/framework dependency bump, and there's been no change to Illuminate/Collections/Traits/EnumeratesValues.php's toArray() method in Laravel between v12 and v13.

Any thoughts anyone?

[jonnott]

@JeffreyWay 🙏

[jonnott]

This same error occurred in two completely different Laravel projects I have .. the only commonality being that they both use this package, and have both been updated to Laravel 13 and v3.2.5 of this package recently.

[jonnott]

In fact, one of these two projects already had its own custom message.blade.php partial, which has been around in the project throughout every Laravel upgrade since around L5.5, right up to L12.x and now L13.x, which the exact same code in it:

@foreach (session('flash_notification', collect())->toArray() as $message)

..and has only now (with the change to Laravel 13 / laracasts/flash 3.2.5) broken with this "Call to a member function toArray() on array" error.

[jonnott]

NB I can resolve the issue in these projects by publishing message.blade.php to the project, and changing the first line to:

@foreach (session('flash_notification', []) as $message)

[jonnott]

The actual cause turns out to the change in Laravel 13 to a default of 'serialization' => 'json' in config/session.php, which means the result of retrieving the 'flash_notification' from the session is always an array, even when a collection was set originally.

[jonnott]

Therefore, this package only works 'as-is' if you do not change 'serialization' to 'json' in your config/session.php when upgrading to Laravel 13. If you do, then you'll need to update message.blade.php to not call ->toArray() on session('flash_notification').

[JeffreyWay]

Should be fixed now in the latest version.

[jonnott]

@JeffreyWay See my comment here laravel/framework#59356 (comment)

I see that this leaves two issues for the updated v3.2.6 of this package:

1. Only if you've added 'serialization'=>'json' to your config/session.php file are you now compatible with this package (from v3.2.6) .. otherwise, if you've left that out during your Laravel 13 upgrade (and there's nothing specifically in the upgrade guide about this), then due to the $this->config->get('session.serialization', 'php') in Illuminate/Session/SessionManager.php buildSession() method, it will still use 'php' serialization, therefore v3.2.6 will leave you with broken flash messages, whereas <=v3.2.5 will be ok.

2. If you happen to short-circuit the flash messages, but which I mean, you actually display the flash message within the same request cycle, rather than the normal flow of displaying the flash message on the subsequent request, then you'll still get a collection of Message objects back from session('flash_notification'), and message.blade.php will blow up. I know it's not a normal/likely flow, but it's certainly possible that a developer might create a situation where a flash message is both set and rendered within the same request.