In this episode, we move beyond just using public channels—where anyone can connect—and dive into creating private channels using Laravel. Private channels are awesome when you need to send notifications to only a specific user, and make sure no one else can tap into those messages.
We start by looking at the default setup in the Laravel channels.php
file, tweaking the private channel for users so that only the authenticated user with the correct ID can connect. We explain how Laravel authorizes these connections behind the scenes, showing you that, if the user tries to connect to a channel that doesn't belong to them, they'll get a 403 Forbidden error.
We then experiment by connecting to different user channels using raw JavaScript with Laravel Echo, and you get to see in real-time how the authorization works with network requests. You’ll see that adding logic to these channel authorization callbacks means you can control access to things like chat rooms, not just user notification channels. If you ever need to implement more complex rules (like roles or permissions), you now know where that logic would live!
To wrap up, we run through the practical bits—how to dynamically output the current user's ID into your frontend code, so you can connect to the right private channel. We close by setting the stage for the next episodes, where we'll put these private channels to use and start broadcasting some actual events to them!