Laravel 4 - Connect to other database

Question

I want to connect to another database sometimes.

I created a config.php with the database connection data.

But how can i tell laravel to connect to this data

Answer 1

I believe you want to implement some kind of logical sharding where databases would be dynamically created.

In such scenario in laravel you can dynamically add a database config, like below

$conn = array(
    'driver'    => 'mysql',
    'host'      => 'localhost',
    'database'  => 'DATABASE',
    'username'  => 'USERNAME',
    'password'  => 'SOME_PASSWORD',
    'charset'   => 'utf8',
    'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
    'prefix'    => '',
);

Config::set('database.connections.DB_CONFIG_NAME', $conn);

Now to connect via eloquent

MODEL::on('DB_CONFIG_NAME')->WHAT_EVER('1');

Incase of Query Builder you can do

$DB = DB::connection('DB_CONFIG_NAME');

use $DB->select() for querying now.

Hope this would help devs looking for a possible solution for this question