I've scoured the documentation and I've spent hours trying to figure this out, and this is really my last resort. If this doesn't work I may have to get a subscription to Laracasts. I'm following this guide and it doesn't seem to be working for me. https://laravel.com/docs/5.4/session

I'm hoping that someone can help me and tell me what I'm doing wrong. When I do my API request I get a success response and it returns the user from the database, but it doesn't create the session in the session table. Also, I don't get any errors in laravel.log.

I can create a user with no problems. I can match hashed passwords when retrieving the user.

api.php

Route::middleware('auth:api')->get('/user', function (Request $request) {
    return $request->user();
});

Route::post('/users', 'UserApiController@login');

UserApiController.php

public function login()
{
    $input = Request::all();
    $user = new User();
    $response = ['success' => false];
    if (!$user->validate($input))
    {
        return response()->json($response, 412);
    }
    $user = User::where('Email', $input['Email'])->where('Password', User::makePassword($input['Password']))->first();

    Log::info($user); //returns the user object successfully

    if (!isset($user))
    {
        return response()->json($response, 401);
    }
    session('user', $input]);  //<--this is not working
    $response['success'] = true;
    return response()->json($response, 200);
}