- Does mindy/orm-file-field work with Laravel Eloquent models?
- No. It is an extension to Mindy's own ORM, which ships with the MindyPHP micro-framework, not to Eloquent. There is no cast, mutator, or attribute integration for Laravel models, and no service provider, facade, or Illuminate surface implied by the package name. Wiring it into a Laravel model would require emulating Mindy's field registration and entity lifecycle, which is more code than implementing file handling natively.
- How do I install mindy/orm-file-field with Composer?
- You install it with composer require mindy/orm-file-field. However, installation alone does not give you Laravel integration, because the package has nothing for Laravel's package discovery to register. It targets the Mindy framework, so you would still need to build all the glue code yourself.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does mindy/orm-file-field support?
- There is no supported Laravel version matrix at all, since the package is not built for Laravel. The repository shows no CI configuration and no declared version constraints, so the safe assumption is that it is incompatible with current Laravel until proven otherwise. It looks like PHP 7.x-era code, so test carefully before attempting PHP 8.2 or later.
- Can I use mindy/orm-file-field as an Eloquent cast for file uploads?
- Not directly. Mindy ORM lets you declare a file or image field type on an entity and have the ORM handle persistence and hydration, and Laravel's cast system has no direct analogue for that. You would need a custom cast plus a small storage service, which is roughly a one-day job. That is lower risk than maintaining an adapter around an unmaintained package.
- Does mindy/orm-file-field abstract storage backends like S3 or a CDN?
- There is no evidence that it abstracts the storage backend. Local disk behavior and derivative naming appear to be baked into the field implementation, with no documented driver layer. If you need local, S3, and CDN support, use Laravel's Storage facade or spatie/laravel-medialibrary instead.
- How does mindy/orm-file-field handle file deletion and orphan cleanup?
- It is unclear whether deletes clean up the underlying files, whether writes are transactional with the database, or whether derivatives are queued. These lifecycle gaps are exactly the behaviors that cause production incidents. Read the source before trusting it with file lifecycle management in any serious application.
- Is mindy/orm-file-field safe to use in production?
- File and image handling is where path traversal, unsafe MIME handling, arbitrary write, and decompression bombs live, so unvetted code in this layer is a genuine liability. The repository is effectively dormant and single-maintainer, with no security disclosure path, meaning you accept an unowned security surface. For a production Laravel app, that is a hard sell.
- Does mindy/orm-file-field expose framework-agnostic storage primitives I can reuse?
- At best the reusable core is small: path resolution, filename sanitization, and derivative naming. Everything that makes it a package is Mindy-specific, and there is no facade or Illuminate-facing API. In practice you would end up writing the useful parts yourself anyway.
- Is mindy/orm-file-field actively maintained and tested?
- The repository has one star, zero dependents, and no evidence of CI, test coverage, or recent activity. That means no reference implementations and no community-verified edge-case behavior. Every integration question gets answered by reading the source directly.
- What is the best alternative to mindy/orm-file-field in Laravel?
- For Laravel, spatie/laravel-medialibrary is the incumbent: actively maintained, widely depended on, and documented for conversions, responsive images, and pluggable filesystems. Alternatively, implement an AsFileField-style Eloquent cast backed by a small FileStorage service in about a day. Both carry lower total risk than an adapter layer around this package.