Developing Locally Using SQLite with Laravel on Ubuntu

I was having a lot of issues with my MySQL configuration on my Ubuntu OS, even after going through all the related questions on Stack Overflow and asking my own. I had to keep switching between Ubuntu and Windows to work on any of my PHP projects, and it was tiring and stressful. So, I decided to explore another database system with PHP for the first time, and I saw that Laravel supported SQL Server, MySQL, SQL server, and PostgreSQL.

SQLite came to my mind first because I have used it for Android development. As I started to configure my Laravel project to work with SQLite, I found out that setting up SQLite to work with Laravel is not as easy as that. So, I have decided to write this short tutorial. I hope it helps you!

Requirements

• SQLite should be installed on your PC — follow this Tutorialpoint link)

• PHP 7+

• Text Editor (I use PHPStorm)

Steps

Step 1

Create a database.sqlite file in the database folder of your Laravel project.

Step 2

Open your database.php file in the config folder of your project and make sure what you see in the image below is the same in your project.

Step 3

Go to your .env file and and change your DB_CONNECTION to SQLite. Another thing you have to do is change DB_DATABASE to the path of your database.sqlite on your local computer.

Note: You don’t need to change the value of DB_USERNAME and DB_PASSWORD

Step 4

You should install the driver that allows you to use PHP with SQLite. If you are using PHP 7, run this code in your terminal:

sudo apt-get install php7.0-sqlite3

For PHP 5 versions, you run this code in your terminal

Step 5

Stop your Apache server with this command in your terminal:

sudo service apache2 stop

Then, restart the server with this command:

sudo service apache2 restart

Step 6

You can run your migrations now, but first, run this command in your terminal:

php artisan migrate:install — env=local

before you migrate your tables to the database with this command:

php artisan migrate — env=local

Step 7

Launch your Laravel project from your terminal with this command:

php artisan serve — host=”127.0.0.1" — port=3000 –env=”development”

Then, you can view your project from this URL http:// 127.0.0.1:3000 or any domain specified by you.

Final Step

To test if your configuration works, run this command to set up Laravel Authentication scaffoldings:

php artisan make:auth

Then go to http:// 127.0.0.1:3000/register on your browser and try to register. You should have everything set up.

Note: When checking your database, using the inbuilt PHPStorm database feature will save you a lot of stress. This means that you can access objects in your SQLite database the same way you would use phpMyAdmin for MySQL.

Conclusion

I hope this tutorial helped you benefit from my experience!

If you like my post, show me love by recommending my post. Follow me on Twitter @goodnesskayode and Medium @goodnesskay/

Enjoy PUSHING codes!!!

This post was originally published by the author here. This version has been edited for clarity and may appear different from the original post.