Specify a different public path - laravel-5

Question

My Laravel app works in the private folder and I need to tell Laravel that the public path is different.
Today I have upgraded a Laravel app from 4.2 to 5.0 and I can't find where we specify the public path since the paths.php file doesn't exist anymore in Laravel 5.0.
In laravel 4.2 we had the /bootstrap/paths.php file:
/*
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Public Path
|--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
| The public path contains the assets for your web application, such as
| your JavaScript and CSS files, and also contains the primary entry
| point for web requests into these applications from the outside.
|
*/
'public' => __DIR__.'/../../../public_html',
I'm not used with the Laravel 5.0 folders structure yet, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

What worked for me flawlessly was adding to public/index.php the following three lines:
$app->bind('path.public', function() {
return __DIR__;
});
This was answered at Laracast.

Answer 2

I think that this could be made in different ways, here is mine.
Create a new helper file. You can create it at Services folder:
# app/Services/helper.php
if ( ! function_exists('private_path')){
function private_path($path = ''){
return app_path() . 'private/'
}
}
A good place to import the helper file is in AppServiceProvider that resides at app/Providers/AppServiceProvider.php. Use the boot to do so.
public function boot()
{
include __dir__ . "/../Services/helper.php";
}
Rename the folder from public to private, and finally you can call your own function from anywhere as:
$path = private_path();

Answer 3

According to this post, to replace the original public path we need to override the application paths:
<?php namespace App;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Application;
class MyApp extends Application {
protected $appPaths = array();
/**
* Create a new Illuminate application instance.
*
* #param array|null $appPaths
* #return \MyApp
*/
public function __construct($appPaths = null)
{
$this->registerBaseBindings();
$this->registerBaseServiceProviders();
$this->registerCoreContainerAliases();
if (!is_array($appPaths)) {
abort(500, '_construct requires paths array');
}
if (!isset($appPaths['base'])) {
abort(500, '_construct requires base path');
}
$this->appPaths = $appPaths;
$this->setBasePath($appPaths['base']);
}
/**
* Set the base path for the application.
*
* #param string $basePath
* #return $this
*/
public function setBasePath($basePath)
{
$this->basePath = $basePath;
$this->bindPathsInContainer();
return $this;
}
/**
* Bind all of the application paths in the container.
*
* #return void
*/
protected function bindPathsInContainer()
{
$this->instance('path', $this->path());
foreach (['base', 'config', 'database', 'lang', 'public', 'storage'] as $path)
{
$this->instance('path.'.$path, $this->{$path.'Path'}());
}
}
/**
* Get the path to the application "app" directory.
*
* #return string
*/
public function path()
{
return $this->basePath.'/app';
}
/**
* Get the base path of the Laravel installation.
*
* #return string
*/
public function basePath()
{
return $this->basePath;
}
/**
* Get the path to the application configuration files.
*
* #return string
*/
public function configPath()
{
if (isset($this->appPaths['config'])) {
return $this->appPaths['config'];
}
return $this->basePath.'/config';
}
/**
* Get the path to the database directory.
*
* #return string
*/
public function databasePath()
{
if (isset($this->appPaths['database'])) {
return $this->appPaths['database'];
}
return $this->basePath.'/database';
}
/**
* Get the path to the language files.
*
* #return string
*/
public function langPath()
{
if (isset($this->appPaths['lang'])) {
return $this->appPaths['lang'];
}
return $this->basePath.'/resources/lang';
}
/**
* Get the path to the public / web directory.
*
* #return string
*/
public function publicPath()
{
if (isset($this->appPaths['public'])) {
return $this->appPaths['public'];
}
return $this->basePath.'/public';
}
/**
* Get the path to the storage directory.
*
* #return string
*/
public function storagePath()
{
if (isset($this->appPaths['storage'])) {
return $this->appPaths['storage'];
}
return $this->basePath.'/storage';
}
}
This seems weird for me and as it's been mentioned in the post, it feels like we did a step back in Laravel's functionalities, I hope they will change it in a future update.