Add support to change database connection

[kevindierkx]

Since #113 got rejected I'm opening this issue to discuss a potential addition to change database connections.

Passport currently uses the default database connection configured in the database.php config file.

This doesn't work for my use case. I have 2 applications 1 for all the front-end stuff ie. issuing tokens displaying the authorization screen etc. the second is purely an API. The default connection for these applications are different, therefore when using passport the authorization process will break because passport can't reach my oauth tables in 1 of the two applications.

I use this setup to separate my database tables across different databases and to separate my application logic to keep things flexible.

To support these kind of setups laravel/passport would require the database connection name to be configurable.

lucadegasperi/oauth2-server-laravel supports this by using the connection() method. It is possible to use the same method in laravel/passport, but it would become a bit messy when working with both eloquent model repositories and bridge repositories talking directly to the DB query builder.

I would suggest using either eloquent model repositories everywhere like #113 introduced or remove the eloquent model repositories altogether and used the bridge repositories primarily. Lastly we could use a static method to set the connection name during registration.

@taylorotwell I'm wondering if this fits the general idea of the package.

I'm open for suggestions.

[themsaid]

Closing since there are no plans for this at the moment.

[kevindierkx]

@themsaid Any other plans on supporting something 'adaptable' or any suggestions I could potentially integrate in a PR?

Since both #113 and this issue are closed without any additional remarks and support for lucadegasperi/oauth2-server-laravel has been dropped in favour of this package, I'm somewhat running into a brick wall.

I would appreciate some kind of insight.

[Modelizer]

@kevindierkx will it solve your problem if database connectivity for passport is specified in .env or database.php file for your application?

Because I think refactoring for the repository will be a bigger change for now.

[bruno-fernandes]

@Modelizer that would certainly solve the problem in most cases.

[kevindierkx]

@Modelizer @bruno-fernandes @themsaid Refactoring to repositories is actually something I've proposed in #113, this would add support to swap out models and manage the connection that way. Also it would make all the calls to the database go trough an 'eloquent' repository, now only 2 or 3 entities are resolved trough an 'eloquent' repository.

Using .env could work, but would need varying modifications to work on all resources.

The cleanest and if you ask me preferred solution would use the Passport service class.
We could add a static property comparable to the $cookie property containing the connection name. Then we should use the ->connection() method on eloquent models and replace the injected Connection instance in repositories talking directly to the connection using the ->table() method. (This approach is actually comparable to lucadegasperi/oauth2-server-laravel's storage setup)

[Modelizer]

Repository comes into picture when we want to deal with multiple ORMs. In your case swapping, DB connection will solve your problem. Frankly speaking, it looks over overcomplicated!

As Taylor said in #113 he has no plan to add support for other ORMs in passport which is Okay 👍

I think it would be better if you propose a PR which will swap connection for passport if user specifies connection in database.php file. Maybe @taylorotwell would accept it 🤔 or ping him in #internals slack channel @ larachat.

[Anahkiasen]

Is there still no way to do this? We use a graph database on our application so we cannot use Passport at all at the moment which is very problematic. I wouldn't mind having a separate SQL db just for Passport but currently even that does not look possible :/

[kevindierkx]

@Anahkiasen Not to my knowledge. Both @taylorotwell and @themsaid didn't have plans to add something comparable or accepts the issued PR's in the near future.

For my project I've ended up using the latest dev-master from lucadegasperi/oauth2-server-laravel. Just before the package deprecated, in favour of passport, they've added Laravel 5.3 support.

With the upcoming release of L5.4 this could get blocking, I've therefore contacted @lucadegasperi asking him about his future plans for the package. He wasn't planning on extending the support and suggested issuing a PR for laravel/passport instead. (That didn't really work out.)

At this point I'm most likely just forking lucadegasperi/oauth2-server-laravel since it has extended support in dingo/api which we are also using in our projects.

[Anahkiasen]

How I solved it on my end is:

1. Set the default connection to mysql
2. Change my AbstractModel that all my models extend by adding protected $connection = 'neo4j'; on it
3. Set the protected $connectionsToTransact = ['neo4j']; on TestCase (if using the DatabaseTransactions trait)
4. Ensure that the one/two straight up calls to DB:: were changed to DB::connection('neo4j')

That seems to work for me without any major change to the codebase. If that can help somebody else landing here from Google.

[tomahock]

Thanks @Anahkiasen I'm in the same situation, have a graph database as the default and I did the same thing as you. It works!
But I would prefer a straight forward solution. The .env one was not that bad and would solve most of the situations.

[oberoivarun]

Need this! Any updates?

@Anahkiasen How would i set the connection on the Passport Models to connect to another database? I tried doing what you did, didn't work.

[Anahkiasen]

@oberoivarun I'm not sure you can reliably, that's why I had to set the default connection to the one Passport uses, and then make all my models use neo4j which is my actual default connection. :/