Laravel Upload Image and Generate Random ID as name - laravel

Question

Whats the best way to generate and random ID number for every image where i want upload in Laravel 5?
My Upload:
<input type="file" id="mypicture" name="mypicture">
Controller:
public function MyPicture(Request $request){
$user = Auth::user();
$user->mypicture= $request->mypicture;
$user->save();
return redirect()->back();
}
Thats the way i do it always for other things:
->uniqueid = 'VA'.str_random(28);
how can i add it to my Controller for image name?
And how can i use only alphabetic character not numbers? Or i must change my DB Table.
Thanks

Answer 1

Try this:
public function MyPicture(Request $request){
$user = Auth::user();
$user->mypicture = date('mdYHis') . uniqid() . $request->mypicture;
$user->save();
return redirect()->back();
}
You can use Date (Y-m-d H:i:s) and uniqid() to generate unique name every file.

Answer 2

use uniqid()
if (Input::hasFile('mypicture')) {
$mypicture = Input::file('mypicture');
$user->mypicture= uniqid().$mypicture->getClientOriginalName();
}

Answer 3

Do the same here:
$user = Auth::user();
$user->mypicture = $request->mypicture;
$user->filename = str_random(28);
$user->save();
$request->mypicture->storeAs('images', $user->filename);
If you want to use only letters, use one of the existing solutions.

Answer 4

Laravel has an inbuilt method for this, using their File facade.
From laravel docs:
$path = $request->file('avatar')->store('avatars');
return $path;
By default, the store method will generate a unique ID to serve as the file name. 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.