FileStorage Plugin for CakePHP
May 2, 2026 · View on GitHub
The FileStorage plugin is giving you the possibility to upload and store files in virtually any kind of storage backend. The plugin features the FlySystem library in a CakePHP fashion and provides a simple way to use the storage adapters.
Storage adapters are a unified interface that allow you to store file data to your local file system, in memory, in a database or into a zip file and remote systems. There is a database table keeping track of what you stored where. You can always write your own adapter or extend and overload existing ones.
This branch is for use with CakePHP 5.1+. See version map for details.
How it works
The whole plugin is build with clear Separation of Concerns (SoC) in mind: A file is always an entry in the file_storage table from the app perspective. The table is the reference to the real place of where the file is stored and keeps some meta information like mime type, filename, file hash (optional) and size as well. Storing the path to a file inside an arbitrary table along other data is considered as bad practice because it doesn't respect SoC from an architecture perspective but many people do it this way for some reason.
You associate the file_storage table with your model using the FileStorage model from the plugin via hasOne, hasMany or HABTM. When you upload a file you save it to the FileStorage model through the associations, Documents.file for example. The FileStorage model dispatches then file storage specific events, the listeners listening to these events process the file and put it in the configured storage backend using adapters for different backends and build the storage path using a path builder class.
Admin backend
The plugin ships a self-contained admin backend at /admin/file-storage
(dashboard, file listing with bulk delete, storage cleanup UI). It is
fail-closed by default — set FileStorage.adminAccess (true or a
Closure(\Cake\Http\ServerRequest): bool) to opt in. The bundled
Bootstrap 5 layout can be replaced with your host app's layout via
FileStorage.adminLayout. See docs/Documentation/Installation.md.
For background image-variant regeneration from the admin UI, install
dereuromark/cakephp-queue;
without it the regenerate buttons render disabled.
Note
Do not pre-fill the primary key on a FileStorage entity before saving.
Path generation runs through the php-collective/file-storage UUID
strategy; if a caller hands it a pre-set id, two concurrent saves with
the same id would race on fileStorage->store(). Let the table assign
the id.
Documentation
For documentation, as well as tutorials, see the docs directory of this repository.
Support
For bugs and feature requests, please use the issues section of this repository.
Contributing
To contribute to this plugin please follow a few basic rules.
- Pull requests must be sent to the branch that reflects the version you want to contribute to.
- Unit tests are required.