Laravel: PDO Exception, cannot find driver even though the driver is installed and tested [duplicate]

Question

I'm working on a Laravel 5.1 project that has to connect to an existing MS SQL Server database. My project is currently on a Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server using Apache 2.4.18. I've installed the Microsoft ODBC Linux driver for SQL Server (version 13.0.0.0) on the machine and tested it manually with the sqlcmd command:

sqlcmd -S DatabaseIPAddress -U DatabaseUsername

It all worked fine. I can log on to the database no problem. When I go to migrate my database with php artisan however, it doesn't work. I get the error:

  [PDOException]
  could not find driver

I've got this as the setup in database.php:

'sqlsrv' => [
            'driver'   => 'sqlsrv',
            'host'     => env('DB_HOST', 'localhost'),
            'database' => env('DB_DATABASE', 'forge'),
            'username' => env('DB_USERNAME', 'forge'),
            'password' => env('DB_PASSWORD', ''),
            'charset'  => 'utf8',
            'prefix'   => '',
],

The database login information is saved in the .env file and SQL Server is set as the default:

'default' => env('DB_CONNECTION', 'sqlsrv'),

Any help as to what could be going on? I've read a bunch of posts on the internet (here and here). People have had similar issues with different types of databases. They had to change the configuration of their php.ini file adding some lines about extensions. Maybe something along those lines? I've tried some various things in the php.ini file that I thought might work, such as:

; This is the extension for the Microsoft SQLSRV ODBC Driver.
; The driver seems to be located at this file path.
extionsion=/opt/microsoft/msodbcsql/lib64/libmsodbcsql-13.0.so.0.0

rebooted, tested, but to no avail. I've been bashing my head against the wall for a while on this one. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Answer 1

Follow these steps
sudo apt-get install php5-mssql
Update /etc/freetds/freetds.conf

[global]  
# TDS protocol version
; tds version = 4.2
tds version = 8.0
client charset = UTF-8`

Add this line to php.ini

mssql.charset = "UTF-8"

Reference : Laracast discussion