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Aghwotu Ovuoke
Aghwotu Ovuoke

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How to upload files to Google Cloud using Laravel

#laravel #googlecloud #pdf #api

The aim of this tutorial is to accomplish these tasks

Prequisities

Create a Laravel API that creates and stores PDF locally

INITIALIZE PROJECT

First, we will initialize a new Laravel project into a pdf-generator directory using composer:



composer create-project laravel/laravel pdf-generator
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USE COMPOSER PACKAGE

The composer package we will be using is laravel-dompdf. To use this package in our project we will use this command:



composer require barryvdh/laravel-dompdf
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From the laravel-dompdf documentation:
Add the ServiceProvider to the providers array in config/app.php



Barryvdh\DomPDF\ServiceProvider::class,
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You can optionally use the facade for shorter code. Add this to your facades:



'PDF' => Barryvdh\DomPDF\Facade::class,
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CREATE SYMBOLIC LINK

To store our generated file, we need to create a symbolic link.

From the Laravel Documentation:

To make these files accessible from the web, you should create a symbolic link from public/storage to storage/app/public. Utilizing this folder convention will keep your publicly accessible files in one directory that can be easily shared across deployments when using zero down-time deployment systems like Envoyer.

To create the symbolic link, you may use the storage:link Artisan command:



php artisan storage:link
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Now, we will create a pdf directory in the public/storage directory. Every directory and file created/stored here will be mirrored in the storage/app/public directory.

CREATING THE BLADE TEMPLATE FILE

Our next step is to create a blade template file for our pdf view. This view will display two values: the $firstname and $email of the user. We will name ours: pdfdocument.blade.php



<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <title>Laravel PDF demo</title>
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Laravel PDF demo</h1>
  <p>Firstname: {{$firstname}} </p>
  <p>Email: {{$email}} </p>
</body>
</html>
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Blade template files are created in the resources/views directory

CREATE CONTROLLER

At this stage we have

  1. Initialized a laravel project
  2. Pulled in the laravel-dompdf package to generate pdf
  3. Created a symbolic link and folder to store the generated pdf
  4. Created a blade template file which will be used for the pdf

Now, let us create the controller to bring it all together.
We will create a Controller in an Api folder with this artisan command:



php artisan make:controller Api/PdfGeneratorController
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<?php 

namespace App\Http\Controllers\Api;

use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use Illuminate\Http\JsonResponse;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\App;

class PdfGeneratorController extends Controller
{

    /**
     * Store a newly created resource in storage.
     *
     * @param Request $request
     * @return JsonResponse
     */
    public function store(Request $request) : JsonResponse
    {
        $validatedData = $request->validate([
            'firstname' => ['required', 'min:3', 'max:50'],
            'email' => ['required', 'email'],
        ]);

        $pdf = App::make('dompdf.wrapper');
        $pdf->loadView('pdfdocument', $validatedData);
        $filename = $request['firstname'] . '.pdf';
        $fileStoragePath = '/storage/pdf/' . $filename;
        $publicPath = public_path($fileStoragePath);

        $pdf->save($publicPath);

        return response()->json([
            "status" => "success",
            "message" => "PDF saved successfully ",
            "data" => [
                "url" => url($fileStoragePath)
            ]
        ]);


    }

}
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You can use the laravel-jsend package to generate JSend-compliant responses for your Laravel app

ROUTING THE REQUEST

Next, we will create a route in our api.php file that will point to the store() method in the PdfGeneratorController.

The api.php file is located in the pdf-generator/routes directory

The line below ensures that only post requests are made to the store method with a slug of generate-pdf



Route::post('/Api/generate-pdf', [PdfGeneratorController::class, 'store']);
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TESTING OUR CODE

For testing, we will use Postman or any API testing tools of your choice. We will make a post request to the store method



[POST] http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/Api/generate-pdf
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Set the Headers to 



KEY     VALUE
Accept  application/json
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And the body of the request to JSON



{
    "firstname" : "YourFirstName",
    "email" : "yourEmailAddress@domain.com"
}
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SUCCESSFUL RESPONSE

A successful response returns this JSON



{
    "status": "success",
    "message": "PDF saved successfully ",
    "data": {
        "url": "url-of-the-generated-pdf-file"
    }
}
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Uploading files to Google Cloud Storage

CREATING THE BUCKET

Buckets are the basic containers that hold your data. Everything that you store in Cloud Storage must be contained in a bucket. You can use buckets to organize your data and control access to your data, but unlike directories and folders, you cannot nest buckets.

To create a bucket on Google Cloud Storage, you can follow this tutorial and skip to 02:13 to 03:44 to first create a Service Account and then skip to 05:21 to 05:31 to create Cloud Storage.

Optionally, you can also check out this slide on How to create a bucket on Google Cloud that contains a guide similar to the YouTube video above

CONFIGURATION FILES AND VARIABLES

Rename the json key generated to googlecloud.json and move/copy it into the config directory like so: config/googlecloud.json.

Next, in the .env file, create add these environment variables:



# GOOGLE CLOUD 
GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT_ID=laravel-tutorial
GOOGLE_CLOUD_STORAGE_BUCKET=laravel-pdf-bucket
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Now, we will create a configuration file that will access the environment variables in the .env file. Create a file in in the config directory and name it googlecloud.php like so: config/googlecloud.php and pass in this code:



<?php

return [

    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | Google Cloud  configuration
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |
    | This file is for storing the credentials for Google Cloud 
    | 
    | 
    | 
    |
    */

    'project_id' => env('GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT_ID'),
    'storage_bucket' => env('GOOGLE_CLOUD_STORAGE_BUCKET'),


];
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Run this command after making the configuration changes:



composer dump-autoload 
php artisan config:clear
php artisan config:cache
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USING THE GOOGLE CLOUD PACKAGE

Our next step is to use the Google Cloud Storage Client for PHP.

We pull in the package with this composer command



composer require google/cloud-storage
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Next, we will add the class 



use Google\Cloud\Storage\StorageClient;
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And now we will upload our generated file to Google Cloud and return the google cloud storage url in the response()->json()



$googleConfigFile = file_get_contents(config_path('googlecloud.json'));
$storage = new StorageClient([
    'keyFile' => json_decode($googleConfigFile, true)
]);
$storageBucketName = config('googlecloud.storage_bucket');
$bucket = $storage->bucket($storageBucketName);
$fileSource = fopen($publicPath, 'r');
$newFolderName = $request['firstname'].'_'.date("Y-m-d").'_'.date("H:i:s");
$googleCloudStoragePath = $newFolderName.'/'.$filename;
/* Upload a file to the bucket.
  Using Predefined ACLs to manage object permissions, you may
  upload a file and give read access to anyone with the URL.*/
$bucket->upload($fileSource, [
  'predefinedAcl' => 'publicRead',
  'name' => $googleCloudStoragePath
]);

return response()->json([
  "status" => "success",
  "message" => "PDF saved successfully ",
  "data" => [
      "url" => url($fileStoragePath),
      "google_storage_url" => 'https://storage.cloud.google.com/'.$storageBucketName.'/'.$googleCloudStoragePath
  ]
]);
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If you see this error: ext-json is missing in composer.json, this solves it:



"require": {
  "ext-json": "*"
},
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Send Email Notification

After signing up on mailtrap.io, you can get your configuration settings from your inbox by clicking the settings icon:

image

And selecting your desired language from the dropdown:

image

Your smtp settings will be displayed below the dropdown. Copy the settings and add them to your .env file.

Run this command after making the configuration changes:



composer dump-autoload 
php artisan config:clear
php artisan config:cache
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Now we will create a nofication using Laravel's Artisan command



php artisan make:notification PdfNotification
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This command will place a fresh notification class in the app/Notifications directory.

In the __constructor() add this code:



<?php
/**
* @var string
*/
public $filePath;
/**
* @var string
*/
public $fileUrl;

/**
* Create a new notification instance.
*
* @param string $filePath
* @param string $fileUrl
*/
public function __construct(string $filePath, string $fileUrl)
{
  $this->filePath = $filePath;
  $this->fileUrl = $fileUrl;
}
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In the toMail() method, add this code:



<?php

/**
* Get the mail representation of the notification.
*
* @param  mixed  $notifiable
* @return MailMessage
*/
public function toMail($notifiable): MailMessage
{
return (new MailMessage)
    ->subject('Laravel Notification')
    ->from('youremail@domain.com')
    ->greeting("Dear " . $notifiable->name . ",")
    ->line("Please find attached your document")
    ->line('Thank you for using our application!')
    ->action('Download File', url($this->fileUrl))
    ->attach($this->filePath);
}
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In the PdfGeneratorController, add these classes:



use App\Models\User;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Notification;
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Next, inside the store() method, before the returning the response()->json() create a User and send them a notification:



<?php
$user = new User([
    'email' => $request['email'],
    'name' => $request['firstname']
]);
Notification::send($user, new PdfNotification($publicPath, url($fileStoragePath)));
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The email should look like this:
image

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