How does one change database for development and testing on local system without editing the .env file each time?
I have found it quite inconvenient to practice TDD because of this.
Is it possible for a Laravel application to differentiate between normal development and testing so that it can choose the appropriate database?
Edit the config\database.php file and add a testing - array into the connections array:
'connections' => [
'testing' => [
'driver' => env('DB_TEST_DRIVER'),
// more details on your testing database
]
]
Then add the necessary variables to your .env-file.
Open your phpunit.xml-file and add the following within your <php>-tag:
<env name="DB_CONNECTION" value="testing"/>
Now PHPUnit will run with the tests on the database you defined in the testing - array.
config\database.php. All I had to do was set the DB_CONNECTION env variable from phpunit.xml, which is the later part of your solution. So what I have now is <php><env name="DB_CONNECTION" value="sqlite"></env></php> in my phpunit.xml
For Laravel 5.5, the proper way to do this is create a testing environment file called .env.testing. Here, you can define your testing environment, including the database you want to use for testing...
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=test DB
DB_USERNAME=test DB user
DB_PASSWORD=test DB password
Then run this command...
php artisan config:cache --env=testing
This will configure the cache to the .env.testing file parameters.
Here is a link to the documentation.
If your testing database uses the same configuration but only its name is different, it would be enough to only change the selected database name by adding
<env name="DB_DATABASE" value="testing_db_name"/>
to the file phpunit.xml in the <php> node
For those, who want to use sqlite for testing
Create a test environment file and test.sqlite file
> cp .env .env.testing
> touch test.sqlite
In .env.testing file
DB_CONNECTION=sqlite
DB_DATABASE=./test.sqlite
Followed by
php artisan config:cache --env=testing
Now again migrate your databases
php artisan migrate
if you need then seed it
php artisan db:seed
And whenever you want to use local env, run
php artisan config:cache --env=local
Please note, env name can be found in .env file as
APP_ENV=local
if you need a specific database for one of your unit tests, add this code at the start of your unit test
$connections = config('database.connections');
$connections['single_test_database_connection'] = [
'driver' => 'mysql',
'host' => env('DB_HOST', '127.0.0.1'),
'port' => env('DB_PORT', '3306'),
'database' => 'single_test_database',
'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
'password' => env('DB_PASSWORD', ''),
'unix_socket' => env('DB_SOCKET', ''),
'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
'collation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
'prefix' => '',
'strict' => true,
'engine' => null,
];
config()->set('database.connections', $connections);
config()->set('database.default', 'single_test_database_connection');
You can use a different .env file for each type of test. You can modify your tests/functional.suite.yml and tests/unit.suite.yml something like this:
class_name: FunctionalTester
modules:
enabled: [Laravel5, FunctionalHelper, Asserts]
config:
Laravel5:
environment_file: .env.testing
And this:
class_name: UnitTester
modules:
enabled: [Asserts, UnitHelper, Laravel5]
config:
Laravel5:
environment_file: .env.unittesting
Or you can simply modify your phpunit.xml and add environment vars like @Tijmen did above.
