Cookie not getting set in laravel

Question

Having a tough time with checking if a cookie exists and then create/update the same. This is to check if user has selected a currency preference on the site and if yes, save that to a cookie and session. For this I've written the following helper function.

use Log;
use App\Currency;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\ModelNotFoundException;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cookie;

function store_currency($prefCurrency = null)
{
    // If not passed, get from context
    if( empty($prefCurrency) ){
        if(request()->has('store_currency')){
            $prefCurrency = request('store_currency');
        } elseif (session()->has('store_currency')) {
            $prefCurrency = session('store_currency');
        } elseif (request()->hasCookie('store_currency')) {
            $prefCurrency = cookie('store_currency');
        } else {
            $prefCurrency = env('APP_DEFAULT_CURRENCY');
        }
    }

    // Uppercase it
    $prefCurrency = strtoupper($prefCurrency);

    // Is this an active currency?
    try{
        $c = Currency::findOrFail($prefCurrency);
    }catch(ModelNotFoundException $mnfe){
        $prefCurrency = env('APP_DEFAULT_CURRENCY');
    }

    // Update the context
    //dump('Currency set to: ' . $prefCurrency);
    Cookie::forever('store_currency', $prefCurrency);
    session()->put('store_currency', $prefCurrency);

    // prints null always :(
    //Log::debug('cookie: ' .  Cookie::get('store_currency') );

    return $prefCurrency;
}

Here is how I call this helper function from a controller method.

public function order(Request $request, $currency = null)
{
    $currency = store_currency($currency);

    $plans = ServicePlan::popuplarPlansForHome('UNL', 5)->get();
    $selectedPlan = $request->plan_id ? : '';
    $right_now = Carbon::now();
    return view('checkout/order', compact('plans', 'selectedPlan', 'right_now'))
        ->withCookie(Cookie::forever('store_currency', $currency));
}

Looks like I'm missing something here, please help. No errors but cookie doesn't show up.

P.S and the route is declared like below:

Route::group(['middleware' => 'web'], function () {
    Route::get('checkout/order/{currency?}', 'CheckoutController@order')->name('newOrder');
});

Further, when I try to dump the cookie from a view here is what I see:

store_currency=deleted; expires=Tue, 03-Mar-2015 10:43:39 GMT; path=/; httponly

Answer 1

SOLVED

Here is the new controller method and it works like a charm. Earlier the cookie was not attached to response.

public function order(Request $request, $currency = null)
{
    $currency = store_currency($currency);

    $plans = ServicePlan::popuplarPlansForHome('UNL', 5)->get();
    $selectedPlan = $request->plan_id ? : '';
    $right_now = Carbon::now();
    return response()->view('checkout/order', compact('plans', 'selectedPlan', 'right_now'))
        ->withCookie(Cookie::forever('store_currency', $currency));
}