# CSRF Protection - [Introduction](#csrf-introduction) - [Excluding URIs](#csrf-excluding-uris) - [X-CSRF-Token](#csrf-x-csrf-token) - [X-XSRF-Token](#csrf-x-xsrf-token) <a name="csrf-introduction"></a> ## Introduction Laravel makes it easy to protect your application from [cross-site request forgery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_forgery) (CSRF) attacks. Cross-site request forgeries are a type of malicious exploit whereby unauthorized commands are performed on behalf of an authenticated user. Laravel automatically generates a CSRF "token" for each active user session managed by the application. This token is used to verify that the authenticated user is the one actually making the requests to the application. Anytime you define an HTML form in your application, you should include a hidden CSRF token field in the form so that the CSRF protection middleware can validate the request. You may use the `@csrf` Blade directive to generate the token field: <form method="POST" action="/profile"> @csrf ... </form> The `VerifyCsrfToken` [middleware](/docs/{{version}}/middleware), which is included in the `web` middleware group, will automatically verify that the token in the request input matches the token stored in the session. #### CSRF Tokens & JavaScript When building JavaScript driven applications, it is convenient to have your JavaScript HTTP library automatically attach the CSRF token to every outgoing request. By default, the Axios HTTP library provided in the `resources/js/bootstrap.js` file automatically sends an `X-XSRF-TOKEN` header using the value of the encrypted `XSRF-TOKEN` cookie. If you are not using this library, you will need to manually configure this behavior for your application. <a name="csrf-excluding-uris"></a> ## Excluding URIs From CSRF Protection Sometimes you may wish to exclude a set of URIs from CSRF protection. For example, if you are using [Stripe](https://stripe.com) to process payments and are utilizing their webhook system, you will need to exclude your Stripe webhook handler route from CSRF protection since Stripe will not know what CSRF token to send to your routes. Typically, you should place these kinds of routes outside of the `web` middleware group that the `RouteServiceProvider` applies to all routes in the `routes/web.php` file. However, you may also exclude the routes by adding their URIs to the `$except` property of the `VerifyCsrfToken` middleware: <?php namespace App\Http\Middleware; use Illuminate\Foundation\Http\Middleware\VerifyCsrfToken as Middleware; class VerifyCsrfToken extends Middleware { /** * The URIs that should be excluded from CSRF verification. * * @var array */ protected $except = [ 'stripe/*', 'http://example.com/foo/bar', 'http://example.com/foo/*', ]; } > {tip} The CSRF middleware is automatically disabled when [running tests](/docs/{{version}}/testing). <a name="csrf-x-csrf-token"></a> ## X-CSRF-TOKEN In addition to checking for the CSRF token as a POST parameter, the `VerifyCsrfToken` middleware will also check for the `X-CSRF-TOKEN` request header. You could, for example, store the token in an HTML `meta` tag: <meta name="csrf-token" content="{{ csrf_token() }}"> Then, once you have created the `meta` tag, you can instruct a library like jQuery to automatically add the token to all request headers. This provides simple, convenient CSRF protection for your AJAX based applications: $.ajaxSetup({ headers: { 'X-CSRF-TOKEN': $('meta[name="csrf-token"]').attr('content') } }); <a name="csrf-x-xsrf-token"></a> ## X-XSRF-TOKEN Laravel stores the current CSRF token in an encrypted `XSRF-TOKEN` cookie that is included with each response generated by the framework. You can use the cookie value to set the `X-XSRF-TOKEN` request header. This cookie is primarily sent as a convenience since some JavaScript frameworks and libraries, like Angular and Axios, automatically place its value in the `X-XSRF-TOKEN` header on same-origin requests. > {tip} By default, the `resources/js/bootstrap.js` file includes the Axios HTTP library which will automatically send this for you.