Laravel 5.1 – Checking a Database Connection

I am trying to check if a database is connected in Laravel.

I’ve looked around the documentation and can’t find anything. The closest thing I’ve found is this, but this doesn’t solve my problem.

I have three instances of MySQL that are set up on different machines. Below is a simplified version of what I am trying to achieve.

1. If database 1 is connected, save data to it
2. If database 1 is not connected, check if database 2 is connected
3. If database 2 is connected save data to it
4. If database 2 is not connected, check if database 3 is connected
5. If database 3 is connected, save data to it

To be clear, is there a way to check that a database is connected in Laravel 5.1?

Answer

Try just getting the underlying PDO instance. If that fails, then Laravel was unable to connect to the database!

use IlluminateSupportFacadesDB;

// Test database connection
try {
    DB::connection()->getPdo();
} catch (Exception $e) {
    die("Could not connect to the database.  Please check your configuration. error:" . $e );
}