This is a best practice question regarding how to handle user uploads and distribute static content to a large number of concurrent users.
I have an upload form for images (png, jpg, gif) and other forms of multimedia (mp4, webm). The files are created, hashed, and stored in storage/app/attachments/ as their hash with no extension.
The request URL /file/md5/filename (such as /file/9d42b752ecd0e3b4542aeca21c7c50a9/dancing_cat.gif) will distribute the file with that name. The route is completely flexible, so replacing dancing_cat.gif with boring_cat_dancing_poorly.gif will still fetch the same file, but will distribute it with the new filename specified.
The point of this system is to stop duplicates from being uploaded while preserving the original name of the document that the uploader had. Other instances of the same file uploaded will also keep their name.
The code I have for this works, however, people raise issue with distributing static content through PHP. I am told that on my large, target platform, this system will work poorly and will immediately become a bottleneck. I am told I should use routes in Apache/nginx/Lighhttpd/whatever webserver to try and serve the static file directly by capturing the request URL before it hits PHP, but that may cause issues with mime types (i.e. an image won't render correctly).
My question is: What is the best practice for achieving what I am doing? How would a big website handle distributing static, user-uploaded content while avoiding a "PHP Bottleneck". I am early enough into my project to consider major rewrites, so please be as informative as possible.
I hope im clear whats the problem but, you may try to hash your current user name and file name plus file extension with sha1 or any shorter encoder wich generates a hash and its barely hard to generate same hash with theese combinations and add that generated hash to file name saved in ur dir. for example
/file/9d42b752ecd0e3b4542aeca21c7c50a9/gifhse3peo40ed-user_photo.jpg
You may then distribute hashes per user for example creating specific folder for specific user to save his uploads so when user reuploads any file the code will know where to save vice versa.
Hope it helps!