change database connection in laravel model

Question

So i work with Laravel 4.2, what i want is in one of my models use an external database, this is my model code :

Answer 1

I think for a lot of use cases it can be convenient to declare the connection at runtime like this:

$McibModel = new McibModel();
$McibModel->setConnection('second_db_connection');

Answer 2

In one way setting a protected property will always connect a particular model to a database.

class MyModel extends Model {

     protected $connection = "second_db_connection";
}

In a query I like this approach...

(new MyModel())->on('second_db_connnection')->get();

Answer 3

You can do it like this to set another connection :

$product= new Product();
$product->setConnection('another_connection');

Answer 4

Different models can have different database connections. So your models use the normal default connection - but your 'McibModel' model can use another connection:

class McibModel extends Model {

    protected $connection= 'second_db_connection';

    protected $table = 'agencies';

}

Then in your DB connection file - you would have something like this:

return array(
    'connections' => array(
        'mysql' => array(
            'driver'    => 'mysql',
            'host'      => 'localhost',
            'database'  => 'database1',
            'username'  => 'user1',
            'password'  => 'pass1'
            'charset'   => 'utf8',
            'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
            'prefix'    => '',
        ),

        'second_db_connection' => array(
            'driver'    => 'mysql',
            'host'      => 'localhost',
            'database'  => 'database2',
            'username'  => 'user2',
            'password'  => 'pass2'
            'charset'   => 'utf8',
            'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
            'prefix'    => '',
        ),
    ),