how to send attachment files to email using laravel
Stefan Izdrail
Founder & Senior Architect · 2026-06-29
Sending Attachment Files to Email Using Laravel: A Comprehensive Tutorial
In this tutorial, we will walk through how to send attachments with emails in your Laravel application. We'll discuss why it may fail initially due to undefined variables and provide the necessary code examples and best practices to make it work as expected.
Your project requires sending email notifications containing various details from users along with relevant files attached. For this, you need to build a feature that will allow your users to send these files along with their emails. Unfortunately, you're currently facing an issue while doing so; you've noticed an error 'Undefined variable: request'. This tutorial aims to explain what's causing the problem and how to fix it.
To start, let's inspect the code snippet mentioned in your original submission. We can see that there's a controller function that handles sending emails with attachments. In this case, we have an array $data containing information about the user, their email address, and other custom data. The code uses \Mail::send() to send the email using a Blade template named 'AltHr/Portal/supportemail'.
The controller function is called from another view where users can attach files before submitting the form containing details such as name, category, company, number, etc.
Issue: The error you're experiencing could be due to an undefined variable in your code. In this specific example, it appears that $request - which should contain data about the user's information and attachment file - is not defined within the scope of the controller function. As a result, the script tries to access unknown properties from $request, leading to the error.
Solution: To resolve this issue, you can declare the variable $request at the beginning of your function. This ensures that it's available for use throughout your code without causing any errors or undefined variables. Here's how the controller might look like after incorporating this fix:
public function sendemail(Request $request)
{
$data = array(
'name' => $request->name,
'email' => $request->email,
'text' => $request->text,
'category' => $request->category,
'company' => $request->company,
'number' => $request->number
);
\Mail::send('AltHr/Portal/supportemail', $data, function ($message) use($data){
$message->from($data['email'], $data['name']);
$message->to('ra7veer@gmail.com')->subject($data['company'] . ' - ' .$data['category']);
$message->attach($request->file('files')->getRealPath(), [
'as' => $request->file('files')->getClientOriginalName(),
'mime' => $request->file('files')->getMimeType()
]);
});
return view('AltHr.Portal.support');
}
Now that we've addressed the issue, let's discuss some other best practices to ensure your code is efficient and secure:
1. Handle form validation in your controller before sending emails. This will prevent any potential security concerns or unexpected results due to invalid input data.
2. Consider using a different file upload mechanism (such as Carbonate or Intervention Image) instead of native PHP for improved functionality, better security, and ease of use. These libraries support advanced features like multiple file uploads, resizing, and image manipulation.
3. Always have a robust error handling mechanism in place to catch any unexpected errors throughout your application. This will help you identify, rectify, or prevent issues that may arise during the execution.
By following these best practices, you can confidently implement file attachment functionality in your Laravel project and ensure seamless communication with end-users. Don't forget to test thoroughly to avoid any unforeseen errors. Happy coding!