// the find
barryvdh/laravel-elfinder
elFinder bundle for Laravel
A Laravel wrapper around the elFinder file manager, giving you a browser-based file picker that integrates with Laravel's Flysystem disks and several WYSIWYG editors. It's aimed at Laravel apps that need an admin-facing file management UI without building one from scratch. The underlying elFinder library does the heavy lifting; this package mostly handles wiring it into Laravel's service provider, routing, and asset pipeline.
Flysystem disk integration is the strongest part — you point it at any configured disk and it works, including S3 or other cloud adapters. Editor integrations (TinyMCE 3/4/5, CKEditor) are handled with separate routes and views so you're not bolting iframe callbacks together yourself. The `elfinder:publish` artisan command keeps assets manageable during updates. Still receiving pushes in 2026 despite being a niche package, which matters for security patches in anything that touches file uploads.
The package is essentially a thin adapter over elFinder, which is itself a ~15-year-old project with a jQuery-heavy frontend — you're not getting a modern file picker, you're getting a desktop-metaphor file manager that feels dated. No built-in upload validation or MIME type restriction at the Laravel layer; you have to implement the access callback yourself or you're handing users a wide-open filesystem. The dual .blade.php/.php view files for every editor integration suggest the codebase has been carrying dead weight for a long time without cleanup. Testing story is nonexistent — no tests in the repo at all, which is a red flag for anything touching file I/O.