[SOLVED] How to specify Tinker to use a different database connection?

How to specify Tinker to use a different database connection?

I have two database connections. One for my application and another for testing. In my ..\config\database.php

         'mysql' => [
            'driver'    => 'mysql',
            'host'      => env('DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
            'database'  => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username'  => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
            'password'  => env('DB_PASSWORD', ''),
            'charset'   => 'utf8',
            'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
            'prefix'    => '',
            'strict'    => false,
        ],

        'testing' => [
            'driver'    => 'mysql',
            'host'      => env('DB_TEST_HOST', 'localhost'),
            'database'  => env('DB_TEST_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username'  => env('DB_TEST_USERNAME', 'forge'),
            'password'  => env('DB_TEST_PASSWORD', ''),
            'charset'   => 'utf8',
            'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
            'prefix'    => '',
            'strict'    => false,
        ],

I am able to change the database connection in seeding using

php artisan db:seed --database=testing

I wanted to use tinker for the connection 'testing' but unable to change it. Is there any way to change the database connection for tinker similar with database seeding?

Solution

As your question starts with using one database for testing/development and one for production, you should look into using different environments, this will allow you to have no change in your code between deployment & local testing.

This task can easily be achieved by specifying your environment:

php artisan tinker --env=local

By default, if you specify no --env, you will be using /your-app/.env

When using local you read variables from /your-app/.env.local

For your specific use case:

php artisan db:seed --env=local

Further reading for Laravel 5.1: https://laravel.com/docs/5.1/configuration

Latest version: https://laravel.com/docs/configuration

NB: You should avoid checking in the ".env" file to VCS, the .env.local should be OK to share, but it is best practice to not bundle production credentials with your VCS.