Eloquent Laravel 4 package database configuration format - php

Question

When creating a composer package that is meant to be run in the Laravel 4 framework, I want to create a default database connection set that looks something like this:
// File Location: LARAVEL4_ROOT/vendor/my/package/src/config/database.php
return array(
'connections' => array(
'reporting' => array(
'driver' => 'mysql',
'host' => getenv('REPORTING_HOST'),
'database' => getenv('REPORTING_DBNAME'),
'username' => getenv('REPORTING_USER'),
'password' => getenv('REPORTING_PASS'),
'charset' => 'utf8',
'collation' => 'utf8_unicode_ci',
'prefix' => '',
),
),
);
According to all the documentation I can find online, once I have registered my project using the Service Provider pattern and call $this->package('my/package'); Laravel 4 is supposed to magically load this file and give me access to it in the configuration.
And I have verified that I can call
Config::get('package::database.connections.reporting')
and it returns the array above.
However, when I construct my Eloquent Model file, and try to set the connection using
protected $connection = 'package::database.connections.reporting';
It doesn't work. I get an exception saying:
InvalidArgumentException: Database [package::database.connections.reporting] not configured.
Is there some magic string format I need to use to get the Connection Resolver to connect to my database using the default config in my package?
Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

Okay, I found a solution:
It appears that the connection handling in Laravel 4 as of this writing is not consistent with the the syntax that the Config facade uses. Therefore using:
protected $connection = 'package::database.connections.reporting';
... will not work because the DatabaseManager class ONLY searches the configuration loaded from laravelroot/app/config/database.php
So, at the time of this writing, the only way to establish a connection defined in my package configuration is to modify the previously loaded configuration array in my package service provider, like so:
public function boot()
{
$this->package('vendor/package');
include __DIR__."/routes.php";
// Add my database configurations to the default set of configurations
$this->app['config']['database.connections'] = array_merge(
$this->app['config']['database.connections']
,Config::get('reporting::database.connections')
);
}
This could easily be handled by the framework by modifying the DatabaseManager class to look at the provided connection name and resolve the configuration details in the same way as the Config facade does. But that is not implemented at the time of this writing.
I have forked the framework and submitted a pull request with a potential fix. We'll see how that goes. For now, you can use the above work around in your package service provider, and then just set the name of your connection in your model like this:
protected $connection = 'reporting';
Since the array of connections defined in my package config have been merged with the default connections defined in laravelroot/app/config/database.php, it's as if the connection was actually created there in the app config, so there is no need for package resolution in the connection name inside your model.
Hopefully, this will be automated in future releases of laravel 4, or a more intuitive way of loading package database config files in the package service provider will be implemented.