Laravel 5.4 --> forbidden 403 on files in Storage with 'public' visibility

I'm guessing this 403 issue you were experiencing was having place in a shared hosting. When you create the symlink with php artisan storage:link it contains the full absolute path to the storage/app/public folder. This is what probably causes the 403 response by the server.

The solution is create a symlink with a relative path from the project root like

ln -s ../storage/app/public public/storage

This should solve the permissions problem.

Edit: I just noticed there is a built in option to achieve the exact same thing: php artisan storage:link --relative.

Go to root of laravel project

1. Run this command : php artisan storage:link
2. Edit public/.htaccess and add to it : Options +FollowSymlinks
3. Run this command : chown -h USER:GROUP public/storage

Replace USER:GROUP with correct name.

I created php artisan storage:link with root permission. So /public/storage/... directory not accessible for users.

Go to /public folder with command ls -l you'll see group:owner permissions.

chown -h storage yourgroup:yourusername

Now directory accessible from browser.

To access the storage folder you must have a symbolic link in the public folder. So, from public folder type ls from console to view the storage link. If don't exist or it's on red, you have to create/updated it.

Creating a symbolic link

From public folder type something like this ln -s /path/to/your/storage/public/ storage

Fixing a symbolic link

Find where link pointed to: readlink -v storage

*Point link to new path: ln -sfn /path/to/your/storage/public/ storage

*Reference: REPAIRING BROKEN SYMBOLIC LINK

as kJamesy said you should check if you have set the wrong owner to your files (for example if you created php artisan storage:link with root).

To fix this, run from inside /public:

chown -R username:group storage

Also you could check for file permission (when I copy the files with rsync the often lose read rights for other leading to 403 Error). If the permissions are not correct, you can fix it by calling from insider /public:

find * -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find * -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

In case you're on a shared hosting, you must create symlink by your self instead of using php artisan storage:link. The reason is the way that php artisan create that link, it uses absolute path and that's what causes 403 forbidden.

Tips: Go to your www folder. and do (let's assume you're a dir call dev in www folder that contains laravel project) :

ln -sr dev/storage/app/public/ dev/public/storage

Note the -sr option, it's really important. With it, you create a symlink using relative path instead of absolute path and it solves by problem in a shared hosting.

If you don't have access to SSH on your shared hosting, and the regular php artisan storage:link produces a 403, add the --relative parameter like so:

Route::get('/symlink_create', function () {
    Artisan::call('storage:link --relative');
});

Then access this newly created route to create your symlink. Don't forget to delete it on prod after you used it.

Source : https://github.com/laravel/framework/blob/e9483c441d5f0c8598d438d6024db8b1a7aa55fe/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Console/StorageLinkCommand.php#L30

When i tried to create symbolic link using the command storage:link, it gave me 403 forbidden.

Problem was that it referenced the original storage/app/public using absolute path.

So instead of the artisan command, i tried ln -l command and referenced using relative path.

enter /html/myproject/public directory and run the command

ln -s ../storage/app/public /html/myproject/public/storage

and 403 forbidden issue was solved for me.

For me, I'm using plesk to host my website. And no solutions were found...

So I decided to move to storage path to public path into an "uploads" folder created into the public directory.

config/filesystems.php

'local' => [
    'driver' => 'local',
    'root' => public_path('uploads'),
],
    
'public' => [
    'driver' => 'local',
    'root' => public_path('uploads'),
    'url' => env('APP_URL').'/uploads/', 'visibility' => 'public',
],

I don't think it's the best solution, but worked for me.

I had the same issue, after a lot of debugging i managed to identify the actual problem that caused 403 error.

Solution is simple, in

Config/Filesystem.php where you define your public_path and storage path, you must have same/identical public_path name and storage_path end directory name.

Example:

1. Incorrect:

public_path('brands') => storage_path('storage/app/public/brandimages');

This will generate 403 error, "since public_path('brands')" is not same as "storage_path('../../../brandsimage')".

2. Correct:

public_path('brands') => storage_path('storage/app/public/brands');

Now the public_path('brands') and "storage_path('../../../brands')" are same, therefore, correct symlinks will generated,thus solving 403 error.

Generate symlinks with following artisan command

php artisan storage:link