TCP Provider connection refused - Laravel 6 and SQL Server (Microsoft) and Laragon

Question

I'm currently on a fresh install of Laravel 6 and trying to connect it to my Microsoft SQL Server, and I am serving it locally using Laragon.

I have downloaded the ODBC driver for SQL Server.

My database.php file contains:

'default' => env('DB_CONNECTION', 'sqlsrv'),

...

'sqlsrv' => [
        'driver' => 'sqlsrv',
        'url' => env('DATABASE_URL'),
        'odbc' => true, // I added this line
        'odbc_datasource_name' => '{SQL Server}', // I added this line
        'host' => env('DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
        'port' => env('DB_PORT', '1433'),
        'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
        'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
        'password' => env('DB_PASSWORD', ''),
        'charset' => 'utf8',
        'prefix' => '',
        'prefix_indexes' => true,
 ],

And my .env contains the valid login credentials. To test that I can connect to the DB, I did a check in welcome.blade.php:

@php
    if (DB::connection()->getDatabaseName())
    {
        echo "connected successfully to database ".DB::connection()->getDatabaseName();

    }
@endphp

Which echos onto my page as:

connected successfully to database testDatabase

I have gone into Tinker to see if I can get a Collection of all Employees from my model, i.e. Carer.php:

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Carer extends Model
{
    protected $table = "dbo.carer";

    protected $primaryKey = 'CarerID';
}

    ...

$carer = App\Carer::all();

Which returns:

Illuminate/Database/QueryException with message 'could not find driver (SQL: select * from [dbo].[carer])'

Does this mean my check for connecting to the database is faulty if I cannot find a driver when attempting to retrieve model data? Do I have to do something specific in Laragon to get it to work for SQL Server?

Thank you.

UPDATE: Following the instructions from here and here, I have managed to add the PDO drivers to my php.ini file and get it running with Laragon. When I print out phpinfo() I can now see the sql servers.

The error I am now getting is:

Illuminate/Database/QueryException with message 'SQLSTATE[08001]: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver 17 for SQL Server]TCP Provider: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it. (SQL: select top 1 * from [dbo].[carer])'

Answer 1

Answering this in case anybody else gets stuck on the same point.

My Microsoft SQL Server didn't have connection over TCP/IP enabled.

You want to:

1. Open SQL Server Configuration Manager

2. Under SQL Server Network Configuration, select Protocols for MSSQLSERVER

3. Right click on TCP/IP and click Enable

4. Restart SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER)

Source