What I have done
When I researched about storing files in laravel. I came across two approaches.
public/storage to
storage/app/publicWhen I researched about which one two use, I came across this stack overflow link. 👉 Difference between storing files in public directory and in storage in Laravel 5.4 In this link in the top answer it was mentioned,
Public folder means files will be publicly accessible.
For example an image stored in
public/images/my-image.jpegcan be viewed by anyone by going tomysite.com/images/my-image.jpegHowever, files stored in storage directory are only available to your app.
👆 Since, including in the mentioned stack overflow post above, and many other posts I have read on different platforms implied the fact that files in the public directory are web accessible whereas the files inside the storage directory are not, I tried to test this by storing files both in the public directory and in the storage directory one at a time, and then checking if the files are accessible through the web url.
My attempts went as below,
images/ in the public
directory and placed some images (Let us say
test1.jpg, test2.jpg and
test3.jpg) into that directory. Then inside my blade
template for the src attribute of my
img tags I referred to them as
URL('images/test1.jpg') etc... and they were indeed
rendered on the webpage. Then I also tried to access the images from
the url by going to
http://localhost:8000/images/test.jpg. The result was
as expected, The images were rendered on the web page + they were
accessible from the urlphp artisan storage:link
on the console, which according to the articles I read, should
create a symbolic link between the directories
public/storage and storage/app/public.
As soon as I ran the command, I got a new folder called
storage created in the public
directory. Then I moved all my images to that
public/storage directory. Then set the
src attribute my img tags as
URL('storage/test1.img') etc... the images were
rendered on the web page. Then I tried to check if the images are
still accessible from the url. for that on the url bar I went to
http://localhost:8000/storage/test1.jpg. The
images were STILL ACCESSIBLE from the url.Problem
However, according to the answer I have mentioned and some other similar links, I expected those images to not be accessible from the url in the 2) above since the images should now be actually in the storage/app/public which we have created a symbolic link to from public/storage. (Files inside the storage directory should not be publicly accessible right?)
This led me to two questions,
public/storage to storage/app/public and stored the images in the public/storage directory?public/storage are still accessible through the web
url, what are the advantages of actually creating the symbolic link?
It does not seem to offer any more security since the files are
still accessible from the url.It would be really helpful if anyone can help me understand the answers to the above two questions I have. Thanks.
What's happening to you is the expected behavior.
The purpose of Laravel storage is to interact with your local files and make use of Laravel helpers, besides being easily shared across deployments. Saying that I would avoid moving your files directly to your public folder.
On the other hand, by adding files to your storage/app/public folder you are assuming that those files will be publicly accessible, but they won't be until you create a symbolic link which is a special kind of file that points to another file.
When you create a symbolic link you are saying "hey, if the user reaches http://localhost:8000/storage/ just show the files stored in storage/app/public"
So if you want private files (and you have created a symbolic link) just don't upload them to your storage/app/public folder, instead of that put your private files out from the public folder such as storage/app/myfiles
He are your answers:
1 - Why are the images are still being accessible from the url even after I created a symbolic link from public/storage to storage/app/public and stored the images in the public/storage directory?
Because in fact, you have created a symbolic link for that purpose, making the storage/app/public publicly accessible.
2 - As happened with my case, if the files in the public/storage are still accessible through the web url, what are the advantages of actually creating the symbolic link? It does not seem to offer any more security since the files are still accessible from the url.
As said, the advantage is to make use of Laravel filesystem. The public link doesn't determine the privacy of your files