file_get_contents with Lumen

Question

I have this code into a function (php class) :

$theFile = '/test/test.xml'; // these are in the public folder
dd(file_get_contents($theFile));

If I go to mydomain.local/test/test.xml, I get the working xml code.

But with file_get_contents, I get this error :

file_get_contents(/test/test.xml): failed to open stream: No such file or directory

How to solve this ?

Answer 1

Lumen doesn't have the public_path() that you might be familiar with in Laravel to easily grab the path to a public file.

The simplest method for re-implementing it would be to add a package called irazasyed/larasupport to your project which adds various missing helpers (including public_path()) as well as adding the vendor publish command that is missing from Lumen.

Alternatively if you do not wish to add a third party package simply create a file in your app directory called helpers.php and then within your composer.json file add the following within the "autoload" part and run composer dump-autoload to refresh the autoloader cache:

"files": [
    "app/helpers.php"
],

Then within helpers.php add the following content:

<?php
if (!function_exists('public_path')) {
   /**
    * Get the path to the public folder.
    *
    * @param  string $path
    * @return string
    */
    function public_path($path = '')
    {
        return env('PUBLIC_PATH', base_path('public')) . ($path ? '/' . $path : $path);
    }
}

Answer 2

You are passing an absolute path to the function that is relative to the server's base directory. This is not necessary the same base directory for the URL. Try passing a path relative to the current executing script.