The best way to redirect old pages.

One possible solution to handle redirects for old event pages is to use a database table to store the redirection mappings. This way, you can easily manage the redirects without modifying the code.

Here's a step-by-step solution:

1. Create a new table in your database to store the redirection mappings. The table can have columns like old_url and new_url.

2. In your middleware, retrieve the requested URL and check if it matches any entry in the redirection table.

3. If a match is found, redirect the user to the corresponding new URL using the redirect() function provided by Laravel.

4. If no match is found, continue with the normal request flow.

Here's an example implementation of the middleware:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Middleware;

use Closure;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

class RedirectOldEvents
{
    public function handle($request, Closure $next)
    {
        $oldUrl = $request->path();

        $redirect = DB::table('redirections')
            ->where('old_url', $oldUrl)
            ->first();

        if ($redirect) {
            return redirect($redirect->new_url);
        }

        return $next($request);
    }
}

Make sure to register the middleware in your app/Http/Kernel.php file under the $middleware array.

protected $middleware = [
    // ...
    \App\Http\Middleware\RedirectOldEvents::class,
];

Remember to replace 'redirections' with the actual name of your redirection table.

With this solution, you can easily manage the redirection mappings in the database without modifying the code. However, keep in mind that there will be an extra database query for each request. If the number of redirection mappings is relatively small, the performance impact should be negligible.