Connect 2 databases in Yii to workwith testdata and real data at the same time

Question

My site is preparing to go live. As updations are developed on my site, I would like to test the updations in real server without affecting the real data. I need 2 databases(the same database with 2 names) to connect my site at the same time. One for testing myself and other for the real users.

I tried duplicating the config/main to config/main_test and the main index.php to index_test.php. And implemented 2 database connections in config/main.php and config/main_test.php. And connected those files to the index.php and index_test.php and tried to run the site with http://mysite.com/index.php and http://mysite.com/index_test.php. But both urls are working based on the database connection provided in config/main.php.

How can I get use the 2 databases? I dont think keeping 2 copies of the entire site is a good idea. All suggestions are welcome

Answer 1

You can implement it with duplicating your config file main.php to main-test.php and index.php to index-test.php. In the main-test.php file set the new DB connection properties. In index-test.php change the path to configuration and you can also enable the debug. Here is an example of your index-test.php:

$yii = '/opt/yii/framework/yii.php';
$config = dirname(__FILE__) . '/protected/config/main-test.php';

defined('YII_DEBUG') or define('YII_DEBUG', true);
defined('YII_TRACE_LEVEL') or define('YII_TRACE_LEVEL', 3);

require_once($yii);
Yii::createWebApplication($config)->run();

And don't forget to use the URL with index-test.php in it.

Answer 2

define an environment variable that's set equal to 'DEVELOPMENT' or 'PRODUCTION'

define('ENVIRONMENT', 'DEVELOPMENT');

Then your database connection can be based off that constant.

if(ENVIRONMENT == 'DEVELOPMENT'){
    //connect to development database
}

You can switch that to 'PRODUCTION' when you want the site to be working in production mode.

You shouldn't be doing testing on a production machine though.

Answer 3

I would like to test the updations in real server without affecting the real data

You can't actually. Far better to use a copy of your live data on a staging environment to make sure things work. If your code expects new DB fields and your DB doesn't have it, you are going to have problems.

Better to have migrations making changes to non live data while you check things.