Helllo once again, im back with an awesome topic. Today we going to be discussing File Storage
Introduction
Laravel provides a powerful filesystem abstraction thanks to the wonderful Flysystem PHP package by Frank de Jonge. The Laravel Flysystem integration provides simple to use drivers for working with local filesystems and Amazon S3. Even better, it’s amazingly simple to switch between these storage options as the API remains the same for each system.
Configuration
The filesystem configuration file is located at config/filesystems.php
. Within this file you may configure all of your “disks”. Each disk represents a particular storage driver and storage location. Example configurations for each supported driver are included in the configuration file. So, modify the configuration to reflect your storage preferences and credentials.
You may configure as many disks as you like, and may even have multiple disks that use the same driver.
The Public Disk
The public
disk is intended for files that are going to be publicly accessible. By default, the public
disk uses the local
driver and stores these files in storage/app/public
. To make them accessible from the web, you should create a symbolic link from public/storage
to storage/app/public
. This convention will keep your publicly accessible files in one directory that can be easily shared across deployments when using zero down-time deployment systems like Envoyer.
To create the symbolic link, you may use the storage:link
Artisan command:

Once a file has been stored and the symbolic link has been created, you can create a URL to the files using the asset
helper:
echo asset('storage/file.txt');
The Local Driver
When using the local
driver, all file operations are relative to the root
directory defined in your filesystems
configuration file. By default, this value is set to the storage/app
directory. Therefore, the following method would store a file in storage/app/file.txt
:
Storage::disk('local')->put('file.txt', 'Contents');
Permissions
The public
visibility translates to 0755
for directories and 0644
for files. You can modify the permissions mappings in your filesystems
configuration file:
'local' => [
'driver' => 'local',
'root' => storage_path('app'),
'permissions' => [
'file' => [
'public' => 0664,
'private' => 0600,
],
'dir' => [
'public' => 0775,
'private' => 0700,
],
],
],
Retrieving Files
The get
method may be used to retrieve the contents of a file. The raw string contents of the file will be returned by the method. Remember, all file paths should be specified relative to the “root” location configured for the disk:
$contents = Storage::get('file.jpg');
The exists
method may be used to determine if a file exists on the disk:
$exists = Storage::disk('s3')->exists('file.jpg');
The missing
method may be used to determine if a file is missing from the disk:
$missing = Storage::disk('s3')->missing('file.jpg');
Downloading Files
The download
method may be used to generate a response that forces the user’s browser to download the file at the given path. The download
method accepts a file name as the second argument to the method, which will determine the file name that is seen by the user downloading the file. Finally, you may pass an array of HTTP headers as the third argument to the method:
return Storage::download('file.jpg');
return Storage::download('file.jpg', $name, $headers);
File URLs
You may use the url
method to get the URL for the given file. If you are using the local
driver, this will typically just prepend /storage
to the given path and return a relative URL to the file. If you are using the s3
driver, the fully qualified remote URL will be returned:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;
$url = Storage::url('file.jpg');
Storing Files
The put
method may be used to store raw file contents on a disk. You may also pass a PHP resource
to the put
method, which will use Flysystem’s underlying stream support. Remember, all file paths should be specified relative to the “root” location configured for the disk:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;
Storage::put('file.jpg', $contents);
Storage::put('file.jpg', $resource);
In web applications, one of the most common use-cases for storing files is storing user uploaded files such as profile pictures, photos, and documents. Laravel makes it very easy to store uploaded files using the store
method on an uploaded file instance. Call the store
method with the path at which you wish to store the uploaded file:
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
class UserAvatarController extends Controller
{
/**
* Update the avatar for the user.
*
* @param Request $request
* @return Response
*/
public function update(Request $request)
{
$path = $request->file('avatar')->store('avatars');
return $path;
}
}
There are a few important things to note about this example. Note that we only specified a directory name, not a file name. By default, the store
method will generate a unique ID to serve as the file name. The file’s extension will be determined by examining the file’s MIME type. The path to the file will be returned by the store
method so you can store the path, including the generated file name, in your database.
You may also call the putFile
method on the Storage
facade to perform the same file manipulation as the example above:
$path = Storage::putFile('avatars', $request->file('avatar'));
Specifying A File Name
If you would not like a file name to be automatically assigned to your stored file, you may use the storeAs
method, which receives the path, the file name, and the (optional) disk as its arguments:
$path = $request->file('avatar')->storeAs(
'avatars', $request->user()->id
);
You may also use the putFileAs
method on the Storage
facade, which will perform the same file manipulation as the example above:
$path = Storage::putFileAs(
'avatars', $request->file('avatar'), $request->user()->id
);
Deleting Files
The delete
method accepts a single filename or an array of files to remove from the disk:
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;
Storage::delete('file.jpg');
Storage::delete(['file.jpg', 'file2.jpg'])