Laravel reCAPTCHA v2 Middleware in 3 minutes

I needed to add reCAPTCHA v2 to a couple of forms and most of the results on Google pointed to these large Composer packages that were simply too much.

This article will cover how to do create a new Laravel Middleware to validate reCAPTCHA v2 requests with just a few lines of code.

Time to read, implement, QA and deploy to production: 3.141592 minutes.

Before you get started, make sure your frontend is ready for reCAPTCHA. This is a mandatory prerequisite for any reCAPTCHA implementation, not just Laravel. Register a new application with reCAPTCHA, get your keys and all that jazz.

Now the fun part: add a couple of ReCaptcha config entries to your .env file:

RECAPTCHA_SITE_KEY=your_recaptcha_site_key
RECAPTCHA_SECRET_KEY=your_recaptcha_secret_key

Make sure the official PHP ReCaptcha library is installed with Composer:

composer require google/recaptcha "^1.2"

Create a new Middleware called “Recaptcha”:

php artisan make:middleware Recaptcha

Edit your new Middleware to look like so:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Middleware;

use Closure;
use ReCaptcha\ReCaptcha as GoogleRecaptcha;

class Recaptcha
{
    /**
     * Handle an incoming request.
     *
     * @param  \Illuminate\Http\Request  $request
     * @param  \Closure  $next
     * @return mixed
     */
    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        $response = (new GoogleRecaptcha(env('RECAPTCHA_SECRET_KEY')))
            ->verify($request->input('g-recaptcha-response'), $request->ip());

        if (!$response->isSuccess()) {
            return redirect()->back()->with('status', 'Recaptcha failed. Please try again.');
        }

        return $next($request);
    }
}

Register the Middleware in app/Http/Kernel.php:

protected $routeMiddleware = [
    // ...
    'recaptcha' => \App\Http\Middleware\Recaptcha::class,
    // ...
];

You’re done!

Now, assign your middleware to your routes:

Route::post('user/signup', function () {
    //
})->middleware('recaptcha');

Or to your controllers:

class UserController extends Controller
{
    /**
     * Instantiate a new controller instance.
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->middleware('recaptcha');
    }
}

That’s pretty much it. Remember to make sure your frontend is working properly or the middleware won’t do much if nothing at all.

Say adios to those pesky spammers and robots!