How to get current instance in laravel 4.2 - php

Question

So i'm working on this Laravel application which uses ratchet for the websockets, and I want to get the current users session in my websocket controller. Previously I was working with Laravel 5.2 and this code worked great
public function onOpen(ConnectionInterface $conn) {
$session = (new SessionManager(App::getInstance()))->driver();
$cookies = $conn->WebSocket->request->getCookies();
if(!empty($cookies)){
$laravelCookie = urldecode(isset($cookies[Config::get('session.cookie')]) ? $cookies[Config::get('session.cookie')] : '');
if(!empty($laravelCookie)){
$idSession = Crypt::decrypt($laravelCookie);
$session->setId($idSession);
$conn->session = $session;
}
}
$newConnection = new \stdClass();
$newConnection->resourceId = $conn->resourceId;
$newConnection->conn = $conn;
$this->clients[] = $newConnection;
$newConnection->conn->send(json_encode(['status' => 'success', 'message' => 'Response from server, successful']));
}
After the user has connected, I just load the current session when ever the user sends a message
public function onMessage(ConnectionInterface $from, $msg) {
$user = [];
$request = json_decode($msg);
if(isset($from->session)){
$from->session->start();
$idUser = $from->session->get(Auth::getName());
QLog::info($idUser);
if (isset($idUser)) {
$user = User::find($idUser);
}
$from->session->save();
}
if($request->action == 'get-user' && $user){
$this->clients[0]->conn->send(json_encode(['username' => $user->getFullName()]));
} else {
$this->clients[0]->conn->send(json_encode(['username' => 'not found']));
}
}
But now I need to do the same thing in Laravel 4.2, but as it turns out, that in Laravel 4.2 there is no method getInstance(). What would be the best alternative to use in my situation?

Answer 1

This seems to work:
$app = App::getFacadeApplication();
I couldn't find any references to doing this, but figured it out via the Facade interface. So I don't know if this is good practise or not. I'm using it because I use Illuminate outside of Laravel.