title: Laravel 5.3 store and read file directories
body: <p>Currently trying to play about with files but struggling to figure out where to put them and how to read them back in a list.</p>
  
  <p>Ive tried putting few test files into</p>
  
  <pre><code>$files = array();
  $dir = opendir(asset('files'); // open the cwd..also do an err check.
  while(false != ($file = readdir($dir))) {
      if(($file != ".") and ($file != "..") and ($file != "index.php")) {
              $files[] = $file; // put in array.
      }   
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>but it just returns blank despite having 3 test files in it.</p>
  
  <p>Looked into larval recipes and suggestions say File:allFile() which isn't a supported method but its got me wondering apart from how to read  files from a directory, where should  i be really storing files I'm going to have on a server.</p>