Storage laravel. Is this secure to keep private image? - laravel

Hi i'm working on sell picture project. I want to secure image in public folder . I follow this way How to protect image from public view in Laravel 5?
Everything work fine. I just want to make sure in storage Path thier is no way to access with URL right? I put my image into storage/images not storage/app/public
If i storage link it will be effect to my private image or not thanks

In Laravel the root of the webserver is the public directory and the entrypoint is public/index.php.
This means that you can access via web server everything under public directory (like javascript/css files and image assets).
The storage directory is one level up and there is no way to access it.
In the discussion you mention the url http://www.somedomainname.net/images/users/userImage.jpg refers to the file userImage.jpg under /your/document/root/laravel/app/public/images/users by default, so the storage directory is not even read.
Laravel, though, will let you link the storage/app/public directory inside the public/storage directory, using the command php artisan storage:link, but that's it.

Related

Symbolic link from public/storage to storage/app/public still makes the files in the storage directory accessible from the web

What I have done
When I researched about storing files in laravel. I came across two approaches.
Storing the assets directly inside the public folder.
Creating a symbolic link from public/storage to
storage/app/public
When 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 to mysite.com/images/my-image.jpeg
However, 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,
First I added the path 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 url
Then I ran the command php 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,
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?
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.
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
You might have many different types of files in one project. Some are accessible to the public, like images embedded in a website (as your example shows), and some are private files, let's say, for example, a pdf of a private report.
Any file that is accessible to the public can be stored in either storage/public or directly in public. As you have observed, no difference there since the former would have a symlink established.
However, private files cannot be stored storage/public (if symlink is established) and especially not directly in public folder for obvious reasons.
Those files can go in storage/app/NOT_PUBLIC_REPO. These files should be made accessible via protected routes (along with signed routes if you want extra protection).

Laravel storage accessibility confusion

I'm having trouble figuring out how Laravel's storage works since there are two public folders and I am confused which people talk about when I read posts about it.
Just to put a context, I have an app where I want to store images just for logged in users. I get the fact that public folder allows everybody too see images, I don't want that. There are two folders named public though which are :
I'm quite sure public is just for css/js/index.php etc. and storage/app/public is the folder where stored files are publicly accessible. I am, however, not a 100% sure.
If I want to have private images for logged in users, is it correct having created the clients folder in the storage/app/ folder?
Thanks for your help.
Long story short, Laravel aims for both of them to be the same. And it is explained at great extend in the doc: https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/filesystem#the-public-disk
Even is the storage folder is indeed protected, when you run the command php artisan storage:link you will create a symbolic link between public/storage and storage/app/public.
All the items available in storage/app/public will then be available in public/storage and accessible from the outside.
If you want to prevent public access, then you need to use the local driver (https://laravel.com/docs/7.x/filesystem#the-local-driver) and it will be stored securely within your application. For example:
Storage::disk('local')->put('FOLDERNAME/file.txt', 'Contents');
won't be accessible from the outside.

directory for public and private file in laravel

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
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();

Storing images in storage folder of laravel, and fetching it by a http request is not working

I have deployed laravel application in heroku. I am storing images in storage folder of laravel and trying to fetch it by defining a route. It was working well on local, but when i trying to do the same on server, then its not showing the images. I thought that storage folder is inside the laravel, so it should work fine, but its not working.
Can i store images in public folder by creating a named folder "gallery" inside that and put that gallery folder in gitignore. so will the gitignore folder be vanished when i will push the laravel project again?
Other options are using another file system. Most of them are paid, so i was thinking to save the images in database, is that the good idea or i should move to files only.
First of all, the storage directory should have right permission.
You should create a symbolic link from public/storage to storage/app/public.
Create the symbolic link:
php artisan storage:link
You cannot save images in database, only their names or links etc. I implemented the same thing you did by naming the files to their path and storing that to the database and then using it to fetch the data from folder on sever

Secure upload files in Laravel

I have a Laravel 5 project in which I am uploading files in database in Medium Blob format.
But uploading files in database takes some extra time to execute.
Uploading files in database is a secured way to keep files safe from crawlers or some bots.
I have tried to Upload files to the Public folder. But the crawlers can open these files.
Is there any possible way to upload files in the file system?
So that the Crawlers cannot open these files.
I want these files to be Secured
you can upload them outside of the public scope. For example, storage/ folder is a good place. Also, you can grab them using the file system manager. Take a look:
$image = \Storage::get('file.jpg');
Edit
A correct laravel installation just allow the content of public/ to be accesible via web browser. If other directories as storage/ or resources/ are public too, then you installation is really incorrect.
Said that, once you upload the files in storage/ folder nobody can access them except by you using the \Storage facade. When you call for example \Storage::get('file.jpg'); it returns an stream of bits that you can allocate them in a temporary folder and then display it in the webside. Once the request has finished, the image will disappear again from public domain.
No need to change the directory this can be achieved by two ways
LazyOne Answer using .htaccess
AND
Using robots.txt
I will suggest to implement both .htaccess and robots.txt as some cheap crawlers ignore robots.txt but they can't ignore .htaccess
You can follow this method
image-accessibility-for-authenticated-users-only
As this only allows authorized uses to view image

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