In case you want to access Route parameters outside controller, you can access current Route object and extract parameters from there.

Starting from 4.1.28, Application::boot() does not initialize sensitive session data anymore. That is, it is accessible, but encrypted. So if you're integrating 3rd party library, which needs external authentification check through sessions, simple checking Auth::check() will not work. However, we can still use old $_SESSION variable. Examples of 3rd party libraries: CkFinder, elFinder (has Laravel package though), MoxieManager. N.B. If you can use Ajax calls for authorization checks, you can still make a custom API with JSON request to user-logged (as an example) to see if user is authentificated.