Laravel 5.1 - Checking a Database Connection

You can use alexw's solution with the Artisan. Run following commands in the command line.

php artisan tinker
DB::connection()->getPdo();

If connection is OK, you should see

CONNECTION_STATUS: "Connection OK; waiting to send.",

near the end of the response.

You can use this, in a controller method or in an inline function of a route:

   use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
   //....
   try {
        DB::connection()->getPdo();
        if(DB::connection()->getDatabaseName()){
            echo "Yes! Successfully connected to the DB: " . DB::connection()->getDatabaseName();
        }else{
            die("Could not find the database. Please check your configuration.");
        }
    } catch (\Exception $e) {
        die("Could not open connection to database server.  Please check your configuration.");
    }

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

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

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