Laravel 4 Passing Variables Between Controllers

Controllers should only receive requests, pass them to data repositories (or Models), get the result and pass them back to the user via a View or a set of Views or, at most, redirect the user to a new route passing some data to it.

This is how MVC is supposed to work.

So, you shouldn't make a controller talk to another, pass values between them, because the only thing capable of firing a controller is something hitting a Route and it will happen only once per request.

This way you'll never have two controllers being created and running in the same request.

But if you need to have your data lasting for more than one request, you have some options:

Request / Redirect / Input

Input::flash();

or

return Redirect::action('YourNewController@action')->withInput();

And get in the next Request

Session

Session::put('key', 'value');

And get in the next request

Session::get('key', 'defaultValue');

Cookies

$response = Response::make('Hello World');

return  $response->withCookie(Cookie::make('name', 'value', $minutes));

And get it in the next request

$value = Cookie::get('name');

Database

Just save the data to your database and retrieve in the next request.