title: Laravel 5.1 $request->file return null
body: <p>I'm currently working on a simple form to let users upload a name and an image. Unfortunately, the $request->input('image') and Input::file('image') return null. If I do $request->string('image') the name of the file uploaded is returned. Can someone explain to me what I am doing wrong?</p>
  
  <p>Form</p>
  
  <pre><code>{!! Form::open(['url' =&gt; 'categories']) !!}
      &lt;div class="form-group"&gt;
          {!! Form::label('name', 'Naam') !!}
          {!! Form::text('name') !!}
      &lt;/div&gt;
      &lt;div class="form-group"&gt;
          {!! Form::file('image', null) !!}
      &lt;/div&gt;
      {!! Form::submit('Create Category!', array('class' =&gt; 'btn btn-primary')) !!}
  {!! Form::close() !!}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Controller function:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    public function store(Request $request)
      {
          $rules = [
              'name'       =&gt; 'required',
              'image'      =&gt; 'required'
          ];
  
          $validator = Validator::make(Input::all(), $rules);
  
          /**
          * Adding the code here also returns null../
          * 
          $file = $request-&gt;file('image');
          dd( $request-&gt;file('image'));
          * 
          */
  
          // process the login
          if ($validator-&gt;fails()) {
              return Redirect::to('categories/create')
                  -&gt;withErrors($validator)
                  -&gt;withInput(Input::except('password'));
          } else {
  
              $file = $request-&gt;file('image');
              dd( $request-&gt;file('image'));
              $destination = public_path() . '/img/';
              $name = Carbon::now()-&gt;toDateTimeString();
              $extension = $file-&gt;getClientOriginalExtension();
              $filename = $name . '.' . $extension;
              $file-&gt;move($destination, $filename);
  
              $category = new Category();
              $category-&gt;name       = Input::get('name');
              $category-&gt;file_path = $filename;
              $category-&gt;save();
  
              Session::flash('message', 'Successfully created Category!');
              return Redirect::to('categories');
          }
  
      }
  </code></pre>