directory for public and private file in laravel - laravel

Question

I want to create a website for selling quality photos using Laravel framework.
I want to show everyone the photo mockup on the home screen.
But the original file(zip) can be downloaded after purchase.
Is it best to place the mockup file in the Storage/app/public path and the zip file in the Storage/app/files path?
If I do, I can access the mockup file using php artisan storage:linkand display it on the home screen. But I have no idea how to download the zip file.
If this method of storing files and mockups is correct, secure and standard, please tell me how to access the zip file.
But if this is the wrong way, tell me the right place to put the files and mockups

Answer 1

If it's public to everyone then there is no problem to make it public, so If you were to use your local driver and would want to make files accessible in your storage folder then you would run an artisan command like below
php artisan storage:link
This will ensure that files are accessible publicly as example.com/public/storage/whateverfile.
However, for the people who have purchased the image, you need to use authentication or authorization to handle it, eg. if you want the files to be only accessible to authenticated user then maybe you can put the files in storage/myViewFile which will make sure that files in the folder aren't publicly accessible. Then using a controller with an auth middleware or route with middleware you can make files accessible.
Route::get('/storage/files/{file}', 'FilesController#show')->middleware('auth');
and for downloading files you can do it in the show method using laravel download response
return response()->download($pathToFile);
//or
return response()->download($pathToFile, $name, $headers);
//or
return response()->download($pathToFile)->deleteFileAfterSend();