Support database URLs inside read and write connections #58522

LachlanArthur · 2026-01-28T06:41:02Z

LachlanArthur
Jan 28, 2026

The 'url' item in database configs is not supported inside the read and write connection overrides.

The read and write connection documentation does not make this clear, it implies that all keys are supported:

You only need to place items in the read and write arrays if you wish to override the values from the main mysql array

For example, this does not work, even though the docs imply it should:

<?php
return [
    'connections' => [
        'mysql' => [
            'driver' => 'mysql',
            'read' => [
                'url' => env('DB_READ_URL'),
            ],
            // Multiple read replicas:
            // 'read' => [
            //     [ 'url' => env('DB_READ_URL_1') ],
            //     [ 'url' => env('DB_READ_URL_2') ],
            // ],
            'write' => [
                'url' => env('DB_WRITE_URL'),
            ],
            ...
        ],
    ],
];

This is caused by:

The top-level url value is expanded by Illuminate\Database\DatabaseManager into its constituent parts (host, port, etc), using Illuminate\Support\ConfigurationUrlParser
The updated config is handed to Illuminate\Database\Connectors\ConnectionFactory which is responsible for determining the read and write connections (if configured) and picking a random one to use.
The Illuminate\Database\Connectors\ConnectionFactory bails when it fails to find mandatory keys such as host.

At no point does the url value within the read/write arrays get read.

The reason to support this is it would simplify the env vars quite a lot for sites with multiple databases each with read replicas.

Since this is such a fundamental part of Laravel, I'm hesitant to attempt to make a PR to add this feature - at least not without input from the maintainers.

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Support database URLs inside read and write connections #58522

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Support database URLs inside read and write connections #58522

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LachlanArthur Jan 28, 2026

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LachlanArthur
Jan 28, 2026