How to access the public directory in Laravel?

To get the file list from a public directory you can make use of the File facade class. To work with it you need to include the File class using the following statement -

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\File;

Assume we have the following files in the public folder ?

Example 1

Following Program tries to retrieve all the images from the public_folder ?

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\User;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;

class UserController extends Controller {
   public function index() {
      $images = \File::allFiles(public_path('images'));
      print_r($images);
   }
}

Output

The output for above is as follows ?

Array (
   [0] => Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo Object (
      [relativePath:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] =>
      [relativePathname:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] => flower.jpg
      [pathName:SplFileInfo:private] => C:\xampp\htdocs\laraveltest\public\images\flower.jpg
      [fileName:SplFileInfo:private] => flower.jpg
   )
)

Example 2

To get all CSS files from public_folder you just need to poass the string 'css' to the public_path() method.

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Models\User;

class UserController extends Controller {
   public function index() {
      $css_files = \File::allFiles(public_path('css'));
      print_r($css_files);
   }
}

Output

The output of the above code is ?

Array (
   [0] => Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo Object (
      [relativePath:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] =>
      [relativePathname:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] => test.css
      [pathName:SplFileInfo:private] => C:\xampp\htdocs\laraveltest\public\css\test.css
      [fileName:SplFileInfo:private] => test.css
   )
)

Example 3

To get all files from public folder the code is as follows ?

$path = public_path();
$files = File::allFiles($path);

The $files variable is an array with details of all the files present in the public/ folder.

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\File;

class UserController extends Controller {
   public function index() {
      $path = public_path();
      $files = File::allFiles($path);
      print_r($files);
   }
}

Output

The output of the above code is ?

Array(
   [0] => Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo Object(
      [relativePath:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] => css
      [relativePathname:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] => css\test.css
      [pathName:SplFileInfo:private] => C:\xampp\htdocs\laraveltest\public\css\test.css
      [fileName:SplFileInfo:private] => test.css
   )
   
   [1] => Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo Object(
      [relativePath:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] =>
      [relativePathname:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] => favicon.ico
      [pathName:SplFileInfo:private] => C:\xampp\htdocs\laraveltest\public\favicon.ico
      [fileName:SplFileInfo:private] => favicon.ico
   )
  
  [2] => Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo Object(
      [relativePath:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] => images
      [relativePathname:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] => images\flower.jpg
      [pathName:SplFileInfo:private] => C:\xampp\htdocs\laraveltest\public\images\flower.jpg
      [fileName:SplFileInfo:private] => flower.jpg
   )

   [3] => Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo Object(
      [relativePath:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] =>
      [relativePathname:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] => index.php
      [pathName:SplFileInfo:private] => C:\xampp\htdocs\laraveltest\public\index.php
      [fileName:SplFileInfo:private] => index.php
   )

   [4] => Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo Object(
      [relativePath:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] =>
      [relativePathname:Symfony\Component\Finder\SplFileInfo:private] => robots.txt
      [pathName:SplFileInfo:private] => C:\xampp\htdocs\laraveltest\public\robots.txt
      [fileName:SplFileInfo:private] => robots.txt
   )
)

Example 4

You can make use of scandir() to get all the files in the public/images folder. It can be done as shown below ?

<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;

class UserController extends Controller {
   public function index() {
      $path = public_path('images');
      $files = scandir($path);
      print_r($files);
   }
}

Output

The output of the above code is ?

Array
(
   [0] => .
   [1] => ..
   [2] => flower.jpg
)