In this episode, we tackle an important part of user experience for e-commerce flows: making sure a guest user's cart follows them when they sign into their account. Up until now, if someone visited our site as a guest and added items to their cart, and then logged in, their cart would basically start fresh and forget whatever stuff they had as a guest. Not fun!
We walk through how cart association works currently—pointing out how a cart instance is created and tied to a user only if they're already authenticated. Then, we dig into the Laravel Breeze authentication routes, figuring out exactly where we can hook into the login flow to associate the guest's cart with the now-logged-in user.
The core of the episode is about adding an associate() method to the cart, which lets us easily link an existing cart instance to a user right after they log in. We update the authentication controller so this happens automatically on successful login. Finally, we test it all out: after logging in, your cart sticks with you, just as you'd expect!
By the end, your app feels much more seamless for users who shop as guests first before logging in.