Connecting to a different database in Laravel based on connection url

Question

I've been tasked with making our Laravel code connect to a different database as the main database when the url is different. Our website is accessible by 2 urls:

a.mycompany.com and b.mycompany.com

I know the main database connection details are configured in config/database.php, but I've read that it's very much discouraged to try to conditionally change config variables there. Nonetheless, if I wanted to, could I check for the current url and change the connection details in that file? How would I do that?

Answer 1

For these purposes, you need to configure the necessary connections in config/database.php. For example, for MySQL, add two connections:

'mysql_1' => [
            'driver' => 'mysql',
            'url' => env('DATABASE_URL'),
            'host' => env('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
            'port' => env('DB_PORT', '3306'),
            'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
            'password' => env('DB_PASSWORD', ''),
            'unix_socket' => env('DB_SOCKET', ''),
            'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
            'collation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
            'prefix' => '',
            'prefix_indexes' => true,
            'strict' => true,
            'engine' => null,
            'options' => extension_loaded('pdo_mysql') ? array_filter([
                PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA => env('MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA'),
            ]) : [],
        ],

'mysql_2' => [
            'driver' => 'mysql',
            'url' => env('DATABASE_URL'),
            'host' => env('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
            'port' => env('DB_PORT', '3306'),
            'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
            'password' => env('DB_PASSWORD', ''),
            'unix_socket' => env('DB_SOCKET', ''),
            'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
            'collation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
            'prefix' => '',
            'prefix_indexes' => true,
            'strict' => true,
            'engine' => null,
            'options' => extension_loaded('pdo_mysql') ? array_filter([
                PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA => env('MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA'),
            ]) : [],
        ],

Then directly in the code, use the desired connection:

$siteOne = DB::connection('mysql_1')->select(/* ... */);

$siteTwo = DB::connection('mysql_2')->select(/* ... */);

$siteTwo = (new User)->setConnection('mysql_2')->find(1);

To determine which domain it is, you can use suddomain routing:

Route::domain('{domain}.mycompany.com')->group(function () {
    // $domain variable
});

Then use $domain to check which site it is and use the correct connection.

It is also possible to establish a model-specific connection using the $connection property:

protected $connection = 'mysql_2';