Laravel not able to connect to database

I am able to connect to have a Laravel app connect to mysql. This is on a a website server not on my local environment if that makes any difference. My issue is I keep getting a error that says

SQLSTATE[HY000] [1045] Access denied for user 'fsmith'@'localhost' (using password: YES) 

However I am able to connect to mysql if I just have a reguler php file setup with the below

$servername = "localhost";
$username = "fsmith";  //no this is not my real username
$password = "12345"; //no this is not my real password

try {
  $conn = new PDO("mysql:host=$servername;dbname=devcenter", $username, $password);
  // set the PDO error mode to exception
  $conn->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
  echo "Connected successfully";
} catch(PDOException $e) {
  echo "Connection failed: " . $e->getMessage();
}

So why does my test php page work but not laravel using the same credentials?

My database.php file looks like this

'mysql' => [
        'driver' => 'mysql',
        //'url' => env('DATABASE_URL','localhost'),
        'host' => env('DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
        //'port' => env('DB_PORT', '3306'),
        'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'devcenter'),
        'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'fsmith'),
        'password' => env('DB_PASSWORD', '12345'),
        'unix_socket' => env('DB_SOCKET', ''),
        'charset' => 'utf8mb4',
        'collation' => 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci',
        'prefix' => '',
        'prefix_indexes' => true,
        'strict' => true,
        'engine' => null,
        'options' => extension_loaded('pdo_mysql') ? array_filter([
            PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA => env('MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA'),
        ]) : [],
    ],

Answer

It seems like Laravel is using the .env file instead of the values you have assigned in database.php.

Take this line for example:

'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'devcenter'),

Laravel will first check if the key DB_DATABASE exists and use the value assigned. If DB_DATABASE does not exist, it will use ‘devcenter’.