Database: Getting Started
Introduction
Laravel makes interacting with databases extremely simple across a variety of database backends using either raw SQL, the fluent query builder, and the Eloquent ORM. Currently, Laravel supports four databases:
- MySQL
- PostgreSQL
- SQLite
- SQL Server
Configuration
The database configuration for your application is located at config/database.php
. In this file you may define all of your database connections, as well as specify which connection should be used by default. Examples for most of the supported database systems are provided in this file.
By default, Laravel's sample environment configuration is ready to use with Laravel Homestead, which is a convenient virtual machine for doing Laravel development on your local machine. Of course, you are free to modify this configuration as needed for your local database.
SQLite Configuration
After creating a new SQLite database using a command such as touch database/database.sqlite
, you can easily configure your environment variables to point to this newly created database by using the database's absolute path:
DB_CONNECTION=sqlite
DB_DATABASE=/absolute/path/to/database.sqlite
Read & Write Connections
Sometimes you may wish to use one database connection for SELECT statements, and another for INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE statements. Laravel makes this a breeze, and the proper connections will always be used whether you are using raw queries, the query builder, or the Eloquent ORM.
To see how read / write connections should be configured, let's look at this example:
'mysql' => [
'read' => [
'host' => ['192.168.1.1'],
],
'write' => [
'host' => ['196.168.1.2'],
],
'sticky' => true,
'driver' => 'mysql',
'database' => 'database',
'username' => 'root',
'password' => '',
'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
'collation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
'prefix' => '',
],
Note that three keys have been added to the configuration array: read
, write
and sticky
. The read
and write
keys have array values containing a single key: host
. The rest of the database options for the read
and write
connections will be merged from the main mysql
array.
You only need to place items in the read
and write
arrays if you wish to override the values from the main array. So, in this case, 192.168.1.1
will be used as the host for the "read" connection, while 192.168.1.2
will be used for the "write" connection. The database credentials, prefix, character set, and all other options in the main mysql
array will be shared across both connections.
The sticky
Option
The sticky
option is an optional value that can be used to allow the immediate reading of records that have been written to the database during the current request cycle. If the sticky
option is enabled and a "write" operation has been performed against the database during the current request cycle, any further "read" operations will use the "write" connection. This ensures that any data written during the request cycle can be immediately read back from the database during that same request. It is up to you to decide if this is the desired behavior for your application.
Using Multiple Database Connections
When using multiple connections, you may access each connection via the connection
method on the DB
facade. The name
passed to the connection
method should correspond to one of the connections listed in your config/database.php
configuration file:
$users = DB::connection('foo')->select(...);
You may also access the raw, underlying PDO instance using the getPdo
method on a connection instance:
$pdo = DB::connection()->getPdo();
Running Raw SQL Queries
Once you have configured your database connection, you may run queries using the DB
facade. The DB
facade provides methods for each type of query: select
, update
, insert
, delete
, and statement
.