Redirection in laravel without return statement

It's not a best practice to use this method, but to solve your question, you can use this gist.

Create a helper function like:

if(!function_exists('abortTo')) {
  function abortTo($to = '/') {
    throw new \Illuminate\Http\Exceptions\HttpResponseException(redirect($to));
  }
}

then use it in your code:

public function reqLogin(){
  if(!Auth::check()){
    abortTo(route('login'));
  }
}

public function create() {
  $this->reqLogin();
  return View::make('blogs.create');
}

You should put the check into a filter, then only let the user get to the controller if they are logged in in the first place.

Filter

Route::filter('auth', function($route, $request, $response)
{
    if(!Auth::check()) {
       Session::flash('message', 'You need to login');
       return Redirect::to("login");
    }
});

Route

Route::get('blogs/create', array('before' => 'auth', 'uses' => 'BlogsController@create'));

Controller

public function create() {
  return View::make('blogs.create');
 }

Beside organizing your code to fit better Laravel's architecture, there's a little trick you can use when returning a response is not possible and a redirect is absolutely needed.

The trick is to call \App::abort() and pass the approriate code and headers. This will work in most of the circumstances (excluding, notably, blade views and __toString() methods.

Here's a simple function that will work everywhere, no matter what, while still keeping your shutdown logic intact.

/**
 * Redirect the user no matter what. No need to use a return
 * statement. Also avoids the trap put in place by the Blade Compiler.
 *
 * @param string $url
 * @param int $code http code for the redirect (should be 302 or 301)
 */
function redirect_now($url, $code = 302)
{
    try {
        \App::abort($code, '', ['Location' => $url]);
    } catch (\Exception $exception) {
        // the blade compiler catches exceptions and rethrows them
        // as ErrorExceptions :(
        //
        // also the __toString() magic method cannot throw exceptions
        // in that case also we need to manually call the exception
        // handler
        $previousErrorHandler = set_exception_handler(function () {
        });
        restore_error_handler();
        call_user_func($previousErrorHandler, $exception);
        die;
    }
}

Usage in PHP:

redirect_now('/');

Usage in Blade:

{{ redirect_now('/') }}