Laravel file does not exist - file upload

Question

I am using a form to upload video files. For some reason all I get is the following error:

Symfony \ Component \ HttpFoundation \ File \ Exception \ FileNotFoundException
The file "" does not exist

In my controller I had a validation rule to require files, like so

$validator = Validator::make(Input::all(),
  array(
    'file'  => 'required'
  )
);

But because of the above rule, I couldn't properly debug what is going on, therefore I ended up removing it, as a result to generate the above error.

Answer 1

In 2020 with Laravel 5.8, I discovered this problem and your answers gave me clues, but I was still getting an error when I tried the isValid method. I found this was the best way to check if a file was too large:

    $file_result = new \stdClass();
    if ($request->file('file_to_upload')->getSize() === false) {
        $max_upload = min(ini_get('post_max_size'), ini_get('upload_max_filesize'));
       //From: https://gist.github.com/svizion/2343619
        $max_upload = str_replace('M', '', $max_upload);
        $max_upload = $max_upload * 1024;
        $file_result->error = "The file you are trying to upload is too large. The maximum size is " . $max_upload;
        //return whatever json_encoded data your client-side app expects.
    }

It looks as if the getSize method successfully returns false if the file size exceeds the maximum size. In my experience isValid throws an obscure error. The upload_max_filesize parameter is there to protect the server so I wanted a reliable way of catching when the user attempts to upload a large file and my client-side validation is not set correctly.