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

Remember that Laravel 4 is actually a collection of components, and you can use these components solo.

https://github.com/illuminate/database

There is an example here that shows off how interacting with the Capsule class works:

use Illuminate\Database\Capsule\Manager as Capsule;

$capsule = new Capsule;

$capsule->addConnection([
    'driver'    => 'mysql',
    'host'      => 'localhost',
    'database'  => 'database',
    'username'  => 'root',
    'password'  => 'password',
    'charset'   => 'utf8',
    'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
    'prefix'    => '',
]);

// Set the event dispatcher used by Eloquent models... (optional)
use Illuminate\Events\Dispatcher;
use Illuminate\Container\Container;
$capsule->setEventDispatcher(new Dispatcher(new Container));

// Set the cache manager instance used by connections... (optional)
$capsule->setCacheManager(...);

// Make this Capsule instance available globally via static methods... (optional)
$capsule->setAsGlobal();

// Setup the Eloquent ORM... (optional; unless you've used setEventDispatcher())
$capsule->bootEloquent();

This is a bunch of bootstrapping that you'll need to run, so tuck it away somewhere in a function or method.

But, its absolutely possible.