Share Laravel's session and check authentication from external projects

gistfile1.php

<?php

/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Sharing Laravel's session and checking authentication
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| Use the following code in any CMS (WordPress, Joomla, etc), filemanager (CKFinder, 
| KCFinder, simogeos's Filemanager, etc), or any other non-Laravel project to boot into 
| the Laravel framework, with session support, and check if the user is authenticated.
|
| The following code is tested with Laravel 4.2.11
| It may not work with Laravel 5
|
| Last update: 2015-01-09
|
*/

require '/path/to/laravel/bootstrap/autoload.php';
$app = require_once '/path/to/laravel/bootstrap/start.php';

$request = $app['request'];
$client = (new \Stack\Builder)
            ->push('Illuminate\Cookie\Guard', $app['encrypter'])
            ->push('Illuminate\Cookie\Queue', $app['cookie'])
            ->push('Illuminate\Session\Middleware', $app['session'], null);
$stack = $client->resolve($app);
$stack->handle($request);

$isAuthorized = Auth::check();

Laravel 5.5

require __DIR__.'/../../../vendor/autoload.php';
$app = require __DIR__.'/../../../bootstrap/app.php';

$app->make('Illuminate\Contracts\Http\Kernel')
    ->handle(Illuminate\Http\Request::capture());

$value = Session::get("any key");

Use Session::all() to see what keys are available:

    $value = Session::all();
    echo "<pre>";
    print_r($value);
    echo "<pre>";

But in 5.5 I am still getting empty array for Session and for Auth ... so not pulling the session over for some reason :(