Laravel 5: uploading an image to send in an email

Question

I have never sent images that were uploaded in a form to emails before, so I'm having a bit of trouble.

I know this line of code: $request->file('image')->move('/', $fileName); won't do anything because of where I'm moving it to, but that's as far as I could get reading these Laravel docs. As a matter of fact, it spits out this error:

Unable to write in the "/" directory

If I were to remove the above code and submit my form, everything works properly but the image fields shows up empty. That leads me to my question:

Where do I move the image to, and how do I get it from that location so that it can be used in the sent email rather than showing a blank spot as if nothing were uploaded?

Here are my files...

index.blade.php (image part of form only):

<div class="form-group">
     {!!  Form::file('image') !!}
</div>

emails/contact.blade.php (image part only):

<p>
    Image: {{ $image }}
</p>

Requests/ContactFormRequest.php:

<?php

namespace App\Http\Requests;

use App\Http\Requests\Request;

class ContactFormRequest extends Request
{
    public function authorize()
    {
        return true;
    }

    public function rules()
    {
        return [
            'name'   => 'required',
            'height' => 'required',
            'age'    => 'required',
            'weight' => 'required',
            'gender' => 'required',
            'email'  => 'required|email',
            'image'  => 'required|mimes:jpeg,jpg,png|max:200px'
        ];
    }
}

Auth/AboutController.php:

<?php namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use App\Http\Requests\ContactFormRequest;

class AboutController extends Controller {

    public function create()
    {
        return view('pages.index');
    }

    public function store(ContactFormRequest $request)
    {
        $fileName = "Image";
        $request->file('image')->move('/', $fileName);

        \Mail::send('emails.contact',
            array(
                'name'   => $request->get('name'),
                'height' => $request->get('height'),
                'age'    => $request->get('age'),
                'weight' => $request->get('weight'),
                'gender' => $request->get('gender'),
                'email'  => $request->get('email'),
                'image'  => $request->get('image')
            ), function($message)
        {
            $message->from('[email protected]');
            $message->to('[email protected]', 'Admin')->subject('Example Text');
        });

        return \Redirect::route('/')
            ->with('message', 'Your application is on its way!');
    }

}

Answer 1

if you want to attach a picture to a mail use this:

Mail::send('emails.contact',
        array(
            'name'   => $request->get('name'),
            'height' => $request->get('height'),
            'age'    => $request->get('age'),
            'weight' => $request->get('weight'),
            'gender' => $request->get('gender'),
            'email'  => $request->get('email'),
            'image'  => $filename
        ), function($message) use($filename)
    {
        $message->from('[email protected]');
        $message->to('[email protected]', 'Admin')->subject('Example Text');
       $message->attach('/'.$filename);
    });

usually i did this for uploading picture.

//Request File
$file = $request->file('image');

//Destination
 $destination = public_path() . '/img/';

//Define the name
$name= "image";

//Get file extension 
$extension = $file->getClientOriginalExtension();

//join the name you set with the extension
$filename = $name . '.' . $extension;

//after that move the file to the directory
$file->move($destination, $filename);

If you want to show the image don't forget use (instead of returning its name)

<img src="foo/bar" />