How to protect image from public view in Laravel 5?

Question

It is possible to protect images from public view in Laravel 5.x folder.

• Create images folder under storage folder (I have chosen storage folder because it has write permission already that I can use when I upload images to it) in Laravel like storage/app/images.

• Move the images you want to protect from public folder to the new created images folder. You could also chose other location to create images folder but not inside the public folder, but with in Laravel folder structure but still a logical location example not inside controller folder. Next you need to create a route and image controller.

Create Route

Route::get('images/users/{user_id}/{slug}', [
     'as'         => 'images.show',
     'uses'       => 'ImagesController@show',
     'middleware' => 'auth',
]);

The route will forward all image request access to Authentication page if person is not logged in.

Create ImagesController

class ImagesController extends Controller {

    public function show($user_id, $slug)
    {
        $storagePath = storage_path('app/images/users/' . $user_id . '/' . $slug);
        return Image::make($storagePath)->response();
    }
}

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EDIT (NOTE)

For those who use Laravel 5.2 and newer. Laravel introduces new and better way to serve files that has less overhead (This way does not regenerate the file as mentioned in the answer):

File Responses

The file method can be used to display a file, such as an image or PDF, directly in the user's browser instead of initiating a download. This method accepts the path to the file as its first argument and an array of headers as its second argument:

return response()->file($pathToFile);

return response()->file($pathToFile, $headers);

---

You can modify your storage path and file/folder structure as you wish to fit your requirement, this is just to demonstrate how I did it and how it works.

You can also added condition to show the images only for specific members in the controller.

It is also possible to hash the file name with file name, time stamp and other variables in addition.

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Addition: some asked if this method can be used as alternative to public folder upload, YES it is possible but it is not recommended practice as explained in this answer. So the same method can be also used to upload images in storage path even if you do not intend to protect them, just follow the same process but remove 'middleware' => 'auth',. That way you won't give 777 permission in your public folder and still have a safe uploading environment. The same mentioned answer also explain how to use this method with out authentication in case some one would use it or giving alternative solution as well.

In a previous project I protected the uploads by doing the following:

Created Storage Disk:

config/filesystems.php
'myDisk' => [
        'driver' => 'local',
        'root' => storage_path('app/uploads'),
        'url' => env('APP_URL') . '/storage',
        'visibility' => 'private',
    ],

This will upload the files to \storage\app\uploads\ which is not available to public viewing.

To save files on your controller:

Storage::disk('myDisk')->put('/ANY FOLDER NAME/' . $file, $data);

In order for users to view the files and to protect the uploads from unauthorized access. First check if the file exist on the disk:

public function returnFile($file)
{
    //This method will look for the file and get it from drive
    $path = storage_path('app/uploads/ANY FOLDER NAME/' . $file);
    try {
        $file = File::get($path);
        $type = File::mimeType($path);
        $response = Response::make($file, 200);
        $response->header("Content-Type", $type);
        return $response;
    } catch (FileNotFoundException $exception) {
        abort(404);
    }
}

Serve the file if the user have the right access:

 public function licenceFileShow($file)
{
    /**
     *Make sure the @param $file has a dot
     * Then check if the user has Admin Role. If true serve else
     */
    if (strpos($file, '.') !== false) {
        if (Auth::user()->hasAnyRole(['Admin'])) {
            /** Serve the file for the Admin*/
            return $this->returnFile($file);
        } else {
            /**Logic to check if the request is from file owner**/
            return $this->returnFile($file);
        }
    } else {
//Invalid file name given
        return redirect()->route('home');
    }
}

Finally on Web.php routes:

Route::get('uploads/user-files/{filename}', 'MiscController@licenceFileShow');

I haven't actually tried this but I found Nginx auth_request module that allows you to check the authentication from Laravel, but still send the file using Nginx.

It sends an internal request to given url and checks the http code for success (2xx) or failure (4xx) and on success, lets the user download the file.

Edit: Another option is something I've tried and it seemed to work fine. You can use X-Accel-Redirect -header to serve the file from Nginx. The request goes through PHP, but instead of sending the whole file through, it just sends the file location to Nginx which then serves it to the client.