Generating PDF with dynamic image from storage stalls in Laravel - php

Question

I have an issue with a view and generated content to produce a PDF. At the moment, I've been working with niklasravnsborg\LaravelPdf (a wrapper for mPDF, because of an issue with another PDF writer I was working with beforehand), which turns out nice PDFs that are of the quality that I want.
I have never had an issue with images inside of the view before with this PDF writer though, but I must admit that they were with images that had been set-up inside the view already (like a logo, rather than say an employees photo).
My issue arises in a way that has at least allowed me to track down the issue a little better.
From my controller, I get the following:
$employeeMedCert = $employee->attachments()->where('category','Medical Examiners Certificate')->orderBy('endDate','desc')->limit(1)->get();
And then in my blade I have the following:
#foreach($employeeMedCert as $med){
{{Storage::url($med->attachment)}}
#endforeach
Now, with this current setup, I get the public path of the attachment, without any issue at all.
However, if I do the following:
#foreach($employeeMedCert as $med){
<img src="{{Storage::url($med->attachment)}}">
#endforeach
It stalls my Laravel to a point where I have to reset the server and hasn't generated anything.
I'm not sure what the issue is, like I said, I've had no issues with images before and the images I am referencing dynamically aren't large by any means (300 - 600 kB), so I am not sure where the issue actually is.
Upload controller action:
$path = Storage::putFile('public/employees', new File(request('file')));
employeeAttachment::create([
'attachment' => $path,
'attachmentType' => Storage::mimeType($path),
'category' => $request->type,
'endDate' => $request->dueDate,
'date' => $request->date,
'employeeID' => $employee,
'createdBy' => Auth::id()
]);

Answer 1

The big clue for this problem is that in html <img> tags do a get request when they are run in html. This means you could be having a permission error.
You can check this by opening your devtools in chrome and checking out your server requests in any website that has an image tag.
Following things to check (assuming you are using a basic storage e.g. not using AWS):
Is image in your public folder or have you correctly created your sym link: https://laravel.com/docs/5.6/filesystem.
If your files are public can you navigate to it in the browser?
Have you tried using the url instead of going through storage? e.g. <img src="{{base_url() . $med->attachment)}}"> (assuming $med->attachment is a file path).
Assuming it's a public file you shouldn't have to go through the Storage facade to access it. Let me know if this points you in the right direction.
The purpose of the Storage facade is to save files and get files and load them into a php variable. Currently you are loading the file from the server and then pointing your image tag to the file and not to the url of where the image is stored.
Putting in a valid url into the img tag should solve your problem (shown in 3 above).