How to Check If a File Exists in Laravel 9 Tutorial

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Inside this tutorial we will see the concept of checking file existence in /public folder or /storage folder. This tutorial will give you the classified information in a very clear way.

How to check if a file exists in laravel 9 application, we will discuss inside this article. Generally we store public accessible files in /public folder or even in /storage folder. So while accessing those files always need to add a checkpoint that they exists or not.

We can check all types of application files like pdf, image, doc etc.

In this file existence checking concept also we will use a php function file_exists() and File::exists() laravel facade class.

Learn More –

• Laravel 9 How To Add Image Into PDF Using DomPDF Library
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• Laravel 9 How To Connect Multiple Database Connections Tutorial
• Laravel 9 How To Generate PDF Using DomPDF Tutorial

Let’s get started.

Laravel Installation

Open terminal and run this command to create a laravel project.

composer create-project laravel/laravel myblog

It will create a project folder with name myblog inside your local system.

To start the development server of laravel –

php artisan serve

URL: http://127.0.0.1:8000

Assuming laravel already installed inside your system.

Checking File Existence inside Public folder

If we store any file like an image, pdf, etc inside /public folder, laravel application gives a helper function to access those.

Helper function as

public_path("FILE PATH")

This helper function looks specified file inside /public folder.

Check File Exists

Suppose we have stored an image 85214563.jpg inside images folder of /public.

Example #1

if(file_exists(public_path('images/85214563.jpg'))){

    dd('File exists.');
}else{
    dd('File not exists.');
}

Here, we used file_exists php function to check.

Example #2

if(File::exists(public_path('images/85214563.jpg'))){

    dd('File is exists.');
}else{
    dd('File is not exists.');
}

File::exists(), File if a facade and exists a method from it. Before use you need to add this to header

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\File;

Checking File Existence inside Storage folder

If we store any file like an image, pdf, etc inside /storage folder, laravel application gives a helper function to access those.

Helper function as

storage_path("FILE PATH")

This helper function looks specified file inside /storage folder.

Check File Exists

Suppose we have stored an image 85214563.jpg inside images folder of /storage.

Example #1

if(file_exists(storage_path('images/85214563.jpg'))){

    dd('File exists.');
}else{
    dd('File not exists.');
}

Here, we used file_exists php function to check.

Example #2

if(File::exists(storage_path('images/85214563.jpg'))){

    dd('File is exists.');
}else{
    dd('File is not exists.');
}

File::exists(), File if a facade class and exists a method from it. Before use you need to add this to header

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\File;

We hope this article helped you to learn How to Check If a File Exists in Laravel 9 Tutorial in a very detailed way.

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