File, Disks and Storage

Difference between Filesystem and Storage

In Laravel, both Filesystem and Storage are used to interact with files, but they serve slightly different purposes and offer different levels of abstraction.

The Filesystem class provides a set of static methods for interacting with the file system directly. It includes methods for reading and writing files, creating and deleting directories, and other low-level operations. It's a more "raw" way of dealing with files and directories, and it doesn't involve any configuration or abstraction.

The Storage facade, on the other hand, provides a more abstract way of dealing with file storage. It allows you to define "disks" in your configuration, which can be local directories, Amazon S3 buckets, or any other type of storage supported by the Laravel community. The Storage facade provides a simple, unified API for interacting with these disks, regardless of their underlying implementation.

In general, you would use the Storage facade when you want to take advantage of Laravel's filesystem configuration and abstraction, and the Filesystem class when you need to perform low-level file operations.

In short;

  • Filesystem class is used to perform low-level file operations.
  • Storage facade is used to interact with any of your configured disks.

Quick Reference Table

Action Storage Facade Helper
Store a file Storage::disk('public')->put('path/to/file', $contents); $file->store('path/to/file', 'public');
Check if a file exists $exists = Storage::disk('public')->exists('path/to/file'); $exists = $file->isValid();
Delete a file Storage::disk('public')->delete('path/to/file'); Not available
Get a file's size $size = Storage::disk('public')->size('path/to/file'); $size = $file->getSize();
Get a file's last modification time $time = Storage::disk('public')->lastModified('path/to/file'); $time = $file->getATime();

Storing Files

Store vs Save

The storeAs and store methods are used to store uploaded files in Laravel. However, they work slightly differently:

  1. storeAs($path, $name, $disk): This method stores the file in a directory with a name that you provide. The $path parameter is the directory where the file will be stored, $name is the name that the file will be given, and $disk is the storage disk that the file will be stored on.
  2. store($path, $disk): This method also stores the file, but will automatically generate a unique ID as the filename. The $path parameter is the directory where the file will be stored, and $disk is the storage disk that the file will be stored on.
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;

$request->validate([
    'image' => 'image|max:2048', // max size 2MB
]);

$file = $request->hasFile('image'); // Retrieve the uploaded file from the request
$filename = $file->getClientOriginalName(); // Retrieve the original filename

Storage::disk('public')->put('path/to/file', $contents);
$file->store('path/to/file', 'public');

Naming Files

$originalName = $file->getClientOriginalName(); // Retrieve the original filename
$timestampName = time() . '.' . $image->getClientOriginalExtension();

Getting Files

Storage::disk('public')->get('path/to/file');

Deleting Files

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;

Storage::disk('public')->delete('path/to/file');
Storage::delete(['path/to/file1', 'path/to/file2']);

Downloading Files

return Storage::disk('your_disk_name')->download('path/to/file');
return Storage::download('path/to/file');