Environment Driven Database Settings in Laravel

Environment driven database settings in Laravel?

You can definitely set database settings (and any other config setting) by environment.

For Laravel 3 (for Laravel 4 and Laravel 5 see below):

Firstly - you need to define $environments in your paths.php and set it to something like this:

$environments = array(
  'development' => array('*.dev'),
  'production' => array('*.com'),
);

Laravel will automatically look for this variable, and if set, will use the associated configuration.

Normally you have a config folder, with settings such as database.php and auth.php

Now just create a new folder for each Laravel_Env you plan to use (such as Development). You'll end up with a folder structure like this;

/application
  /config
    /development
      database.php
    /production
      database.php
    application.php
    config.php
    database.php
    ...
    user_agents.php

You'll note I've only included database.php in each subfolder. Laravel will always load the default config settings first, then override them with any custom configs from the environments setting.

Finally, in your development/database file, you would have something like this;

<?php
 return array(
'default' => 'mysql'
 );

p.s. I just tested this on the current 3.2.12 build of Laravel - and it definitely works.

Bonus Tip: You can also automatically set an environment for Artisan, so you do not have to include the environment manually on each command line! To do this:

1. You need to know your 'hostname' that you are running Artisan on. To find out - temporarily edit the artisan.php in your root folder, and add var_dump(gethostname()); to line 2 (i.e. above everything).

2. Run php artisan from the command line. You will get a string dump with your hostname. In my case its "TSE-Win7";

3. Remove the changes to the artisan.php file

4. Add your hostname (i.e. "TSE-Win7") to the environments.

You should end up with something like this:

$environments = array(
  'development' => array('*.dev', 'TSE-Win7'),
  'production' => array('*.com'),
);

Artisan will now run using your development environment. If you deploy to a live server - re-run these steps to get the hostname() for the server, and you can configure a specific artisan config just for the server!

For Laravel 4:

The default environment is always production. But in your start.php file you can define additional environments.

 $env = $app->detectEnvironment(array(
   'local' => array('your-machine-name'),
));

On Linux and Mac, you may determine your hostname by type hostname in your terminal - it will output the name of your computer. On Windows put dd(gethostname()); at the beginning of your routes.php file - and run the website once - it will show you the current hostname of your computer.

To get the current environment as a variable in your application - read this SO answer here. Laravel 4: how can I get the environment value?

For Laravel 5:

There is single configuration file, called .env in your root directory.
Watch this laracast, config explained fully.

Laravel 4 separate config files for packages

Package-related, environment-specific configuration files have to be placed in the package's directory within a subdirectory named after the environment. So in your case this would be

app
   - config
      - packages
         - greggilbert
            - recaptcha
               - development
                  - config.php
               - production
                  - config.php

But it can get really ugly and cumbersome in some cases. This can be solved in a (in my opinion) cleaner and more elegant way through enviroment files in your application root directory:

/.env.development.php

<?php
return [

    // any configuration settings for your local environment

    'RECAPTCHA_TEMPLATE' => 'customCaptcha',
    'RECAPTCHA_LANGUAGE' => 'en',

];

That way, you could leave the package directory as it is:

app
   - config
      - packages
         - greggilbert
            - recaptcha
               - config.php

Laravel will load the environment file according to the environment and make the environment variables globally available through getenv(). So now you could just grab the specified template for the current environment with getenv('RECAPTCHA_TEMPLATE') from the config.php.

Laravel Different Database Credentials for local and production

Do like this
config/database.php (production setting)

'mysql' => [
    'driver'    => 'mysql',
    'host'      => env('DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
    'database'  => env('DB_DATABASE', 'db'),
    'username'  => env('DB_USERNAME', 'root'),
    'password'  => env('DB_PASSWORD', '********'),
    'charset'   => 'utf8',
    'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
    'prefix'    => '',
    'strict'    => false,
],

.env file (local setting)

APP_ENV=local
APP_DEBUG=true
APP_URL=project.dev

DB_HOST=localhost
DB_DATABASE=mydb
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=

Artisan unable to use $_SERVER variables from database config file

Because Artisan is a CLI PHP request - the request never hits the .htaccess file - and therefore your variables are never set.

As a workaround - you could define the variables inside the artisan file itself on line 3 (just after the <?php)

$_SERVER['DBNAME'] = 'test';
$_SERVER['DBUSER'] = 'something';

edit: I just noticed you said this is public hosted on github - so you wont want to include your username/password in the file? Maybe put the artisan file as part of the .gitignore group - so you dont push/pull that single file?

Can't install Laravel to dynamically created database

If you want to change a config during runtime, use:

config(["database.connections.{$connection}.database" => $dbname]);

However, as you are changing a pre-existing connection, the DatabaseManager may have already created a connection using the old config. Therefore you may need to run the following:

DB::reconnect($connection);

This would not be needed if it is a fresh new connection that was not used. i.e.

config(["database.connections.{$connection}' => $connectionConfig]);

If you want to choose which database connection to use just do:

DB::connection($connectionName)->where('what_ever', 20)->...->get()

Alternatively change your default connection like so:

DB::setDefaultConnection($connectionName);
DB::where('whaterver', 20)->...->get()

The reason the following does not work is:

// You shouldn't be changing env variables during runtime, especially if config is cached
$_ENV['DB_DATABASE'] = $dbname; 

// this function checks what environment your in. Correct usage $this->getLaravel()->environment('staging')
$this->getLaravel()->environment(['DB_DATABASE' => $dbname]); 
$this->info('env: ' . $this->getLaravel()->environment('DB_DATABASE'));

// This enables the the putenv adapter. You shouldn't be calling it for this.
\Illuminate\Support\Env::enablePutenv();

// putenv shouldn't be used in Laravel project
putenv('DB_DATABASE=' . $dbname);

// This should set the database for the config, but you need to make sure your using it. Note this change is not persistent.
config(['database.connections.' . $connection . '.database' => $dbname]);

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