Securing Admin Routes in Laravel: How We Locked Down Force-Login to Local Only

The Risk of Over-Accessible Admin Tools

A few weeks ago, while refactoring parts of AustinsElite’s authentication flow, I caught something that made me pause: a force-login route that let developers impersonate any user. Super handy during local testing—but a massive liability if it ever slipped into production.

This endpoint was built to speed up debugging user-specific issues without needing credentials. But leaving it enabled in staging or production? That’s handing attackers a golden ticket. Even with obscure routing, exposed admin functionality is a common attack vector. We needed to ensure this route only worked where it should: on a developer’s local machine.

The goal was simple: keep the tool available during development, but make it vanish entirely in any other environment. No half-measures. No "just trust the team not to deploy it."

Gating Access with Laravel’s Environment Check

Laravel makes this kind of conditional logic straightforward. Instead of relying on config files or manual checks, we leaned into app()->environment(), a built-in helper that tells you exactly what environment the app is running in.

Here’s how we wrapped the route:

if (app()->environment('local')) {
    Route::get('/force-login/{userId}', [ForceLoginController::class, 'login']);
}

That’s it. The route is now only registered when the app is running in local mode. In staging, production, or any other environment, Laravel’s router doesn’t even know this endpoint exists. It’s not just disabled—it’s invisible.

This approach beats alternatives like middleware that return 403s, because those still expose the route’s existence. With this method, there’s no endpoint to probe, no response to analyze. From an attacker’s perspective, it’s as if the code was never written.

We applied this pattern during AustinsElite’s September security sweep, where we audited all developer-facing tools and admin shortcuts. This one change alone removed a critical attack surface with zero runtime cost.

Trade-Offs and Why This Fits Our Stack

You might ask: why not use middleware or role-based permissions instead?

We considered it. A middleware could check the environment and abort with a 403, or we could restrict access to users with an is_developer flag. But both have downsides.

Middleware still exposes the route. Scanners or leaked logs could reveal its presence, inviting targeted attacks. Plus, it adds unnecessary overhead—every request hits the router, passes through middleware, then gets denied. Why process it at all?

Role-based checks are even riskier. They assume user data is secure, but if an attacker compromises a developer account (or seeds a fake one), they’re in. Environment-based registration removes that variable entirely—no user, no database, no config override can bypass it.

Another option? Feature flags or config toggles. But those live in .env files or databases, which can be misconfigured or leaked. app()->environment('local') relies on a single source of truth: the APP_ENV value, which is set at deploy time and rarely changes in production.

This solution also aligns perfectly with Laravel 12’s emphasis on clear, environment-aware bootstrapping. It’s not a hack—it’s using the framework as intended.

At AustinsElite, we’re running the primary app on Laravel 12 (not Next.js, despite earlier labels), so this pattern integrates cleanly into our RouteServiceProvider and fits our full-stack PHP workflow. The historical mention of Next.js was a mislabel—we’re not using it in production, and this security pattern is backend-only anyway.

Bottom Line: Secure by Default, Not by Accident

This wasn’t a flashy refactor. No new UI, no user-facing changes. But it’s the kind of quiet hardening that prevents headlines.

Security isn’t just about firewalls and encryption. It’s about discipline in how we expose tools, even internally. If a feature doesn’t need to exist outside local development, it shouldn’t.

By using app()->environment('local') to conditionally register admin routes, we’ve made our app more secure by default—without adding complexity or slowing down development. That’s the kind of win that compounds over time.

If you’re building admin tools or debug endpoints, ask yourself: Could this ever run in production? If the answer is no, make sure it can’t—not just that it shouldn’t.