Laravel upload file to resource - file-upload

Question

In Laravel I have a resource controller in which I need to handle picture uploads. In my create.blade.php I have the following form:
{{ Form::open(array('action' => 'PhotoController#store', 'method' => 'post')); }}
{{Form::text('text'); }}
{{Form::file('photo');}}
{{Form::submit('Submit');}}
{{ Form::close() }}
In my PhotoController I have the following store function
public function store()
{
if (Input::hasFile('photo'))
{
return 'Got the photo';
}
else { return Input::get('text'); }
}
The input from the field 'text' is returned, however it does not seem like Laravel can find the photo I upload.
I tried to change the method to put and create a custom function to handle this but with the same result. How come I cannot make Laravel recognize that I've attached a file?
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

You need to add 'files' => true and 'enctype' =>"multipart/form-data" to your form like so
{{ Form::open(array('action' => 'PhotoController#store', 'method' => 'post', 'files' => true, 'enctype' =>"multipart/form-data")); }}
In regard to the POST and PUT options it depends on what you are doing. As you are using the store resource method, you should use POST. If you are going to use the update method then you would use PUT.
For resource controllers the methods and HTTP requests work like this
+-------------------+-------------+
| Controller method | HTTP Method |
+-------------------+-------------+
| index | GET |
| create | GET |
| store | POST |
| show | GET |
| edit | GET |
| update | PUT / PATCH |
| destroy | DELETE |
+-------------------+-------------+
The confusing ones are create and edit which you may think should be POST but remember this are the pages that 'get' the forms in order to edit or create an item.
Once you have your file you will need to do something with it. Therefore, next you are going to want to do something with the file, so you will need
$photo = Input::file('photo');
$photo->move($destinationPath, $fileName);
Documentation on these and all the other Input::file() methods can be found in the Laravel documentation here.

Answer 2

{{ Form::open(array('route' => 'images.store', 'role' => 'form', 'files' => true)) }}
This is what I use for my file upload form, I don't have 'enctype' or 'method' and I point to a route instead of an action.
This is what it translates to in HTML:
<form method="POST" action="action url" accept-charset="UTF-8" role="form" enctype="multipart/form-data"><input name="_token" type="hidden" value="token value">
As you can see the 'enctype' and 'method' is added by the Form::open helper function. The role="form" is for Bootstrap to format the form correctly.
About HTML and forms: http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/html