Hello, I'm an experienced php MVC programmer but only have tinkered with Laravel and October thus far. I'm delving into my first October project, seems perfect for what I need.

I'm writing a plugin to offer cooking recipe catalog functions. Users can make/choose ingredients, create/update recipes, and add images of the recipes.

The image functionality is generic- I just need a simple way for users to upload images (with resizing) and maintain a gallery for each recipe.

How can I take advantage of October's existing Media functionality to achieve this? Or is there a Plugin I can use? Or should I just handle all the image uploading, manipulation, and storage within my own plugin (and a special plugin upload directory)?

I have looked at UploadManager and FileManager but it seems limited to the backend? I need something that a normal logged in user can use from the frontend.

I just need to know which direction to go in! Thanks for your time!

Derek

One more thing- if I create my own basic image/gallery functionality within my Plugin, should my uploaded images be tied to October's system_files table in any way? Or is that table reserved only for the backend CMS functionality? Thanks again!

Absolutely connect your images via the system_files table. You can do this by defining an attachOne or attachMany relationship to your model.

http://octobercms.com/docs/database/model#file-attachments

Hi Scott, thanks a lot, this points me in the direction I need to go!