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PHP

Posted by Young Sam Pinheiro
Young Sam Pinheiro
Courses Plus Student 1,582 Points

LARAVEL: How the Models Know which Database to Access?

I was watching the http://teamtreehouse.com/library/laravel-basics/laravel-and-databases/eloquent-orm video and became to have doubts about how is set the link between models and databases? I Undertand that when you use the same name for Controllers and Models, the framework understands that both have a correlation. But how the framework knows which database that correlates to these two, if database names are different?

1 Answer

thomascawthorn
thomascawthorn
22,986 Points

In app > config > database.php, you have something like this:

<?php

        'mysql' => array(
            'driver'    => 'mysql',
            'host'      => 'localhost',
            'database'  => 'forge',
            'username'  => 'forge',
            'password'  => '',
            'charset'   => 'utf8',
            'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
            'prefix'    => '',
        ),

?>

The application uses one database, with multiple tables. The database connection is made in this file for the live application. When you're working locally, you might have a local folder setup in app > config > local > database.php where you will find your local database connection information for working locally.

Inside a model file ( app > models > any-model-file.php), you can select a specific table like so:

<?php
    /**
     * The database table used by the model.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $table = 'todo_lists';
?>

If you haven't explicitly given a table name inside your model file, here's what laravel will do for you:

"The lower-case, plural name of the class will be used as the table name unless another name is explicitly specified. So, in this case, Eloquent will assume the User model stores records in the users table."

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Young Sam Pinheiro
Young Sam Pinheiro
Courses Plus Student 1,582 Points

Thanks! It answered my question.