Image upload mutator improvements

[singeryo]

Hi !

So I've been using the image upload feature, following the documentation and I was thinking there is maybe room for improvement, specifically on the model mutator end of things.

Here is my concern: say you have an image upload for a model called Article that has an image attribute that is required, and not nullable is the database.

Here would be the code snippet for that attributes mutator (exactly as in the docs)

public function setImageAttribute($value)
    {
        $attribute_name = "image";
        $disk = "public";
        $destination_path = "folder_1/subfolder_1";

        $this->uploadFileToDisk($value, $attribute_name, $disk, $destination_path);

    // return $this->attributes[{$attribute_name}]; // uncomment if this is a translatable field
    }

This would in practice work fine if the form validation makes the field required.

But say now you want to test your Article model. You would have a test that looks like this (assuming the factory does in fact correctly set a random value for the image attribute):

/**
     * Test if this model saves properly to database
     *
     * @return void
     */
    public function test_creates_properly()
    {
         Article::factory()->count(5)->create();
         $this->assertDatabaseCount('articles', 5);
    }

Aaaaand your test would fail. This is because the mutator prevents the image attribute to be set, as there is no image in the request().
Now there is a solution that is quite simple:

public function setImageAttribute($value)
    {
        $attribute_name = "image";
        $disk = "public";
        $destination_path = "folder_1/subfolder_1";

        $this->uploadFileToDisk($value, $attribute_name, $disk, $destination_path);

        // After all checks have been done, set the attribute anyway if there is no file and value is set
        // This is because we need the factory to function properly in unit tests without a Request file
        // Form Validation will have the responsibility to check file upload
        if (!request()->hasFile($attribute_name) && !is_null($value)) {
            $this->attributes[$attribute_name] = $value;
        }

    // return $this->attributes[{$attribute_name}]; // uncomment if this is a translatable field
    }

Now I am wondering: is this the right solution ? This assumes that checking that there is an actual image is the forms validations responsibility.
It also assumes that the unit test should pass as it is, as we are not testing a file upload feature but simply if a model creation works.

Another thought might be that these request() checks and, in fact, the whole file upload feature shouldn't be the models responsibilty, but rather of the Controller.

So i'm figuring that if the solution is correct you guys might wan't to update the docs, and if not let's talk about better solutions :) .

Cheers