PDOException: could not find driver when using phpunit

Question

I am starting to use laravel 4 and I am trying to start using unit tests so I can make my live easier. Well as all of you will guess my development hasn't become easier after trying phpunit tests. The simple tests are well, easy but when the things start to get a bit more complicated they does not go as I though they will.

The problem is I have conducted simple tests but I get some strange error PDOException: could not find driver. I have read a few articles and post on this topic but nothing solved my problem. I have installed php5-mysql and when I call php -m it says that I have both PDO and pdo_mysql. The actual command I use is php -m |grep -i "pdo" and the output is:

PDO
pdo_mysql

Well I've tried to actualy test PDOException class in the browser. For that purpose I have change the mysql user password to incorrect one and tested what will happen in artisan server (called with command php artisan serve ---> http://localhost:8000/). In the browser everything works as a charm but when I try to call ``phpunit` in the console the result is not the same.

I have tried to see if webserver and cli have different configuration files but it turnout that the files are identical. The configuration files that I have compared are:

for the web server

/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-pdo_mysql.ini
/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/05-opcache.ini
/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-json.ini
/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-mysql.ini
/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-mysqli.ini
/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/10-pdo.ini
/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-mcrypt.ini
/etc/php5/apache2/conf.d/20-curl.ini
/etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

for command line

/etc/php5/cli/conf.d/20-pdo_mysql.ini
/etc/php5/cli/conf.d/05-opcache.ini
/etc/php5/cli/conf.d/20-json.ini
/etc/php5/cli/conf.d/20-mysql.ini
/etc/php5/cli/conf.d/20-mysqli.ini
/etc/php5/cli/conf.d/10-pdo.ini
/etc/php5/cli/conf.d/20-mcrypt.ini
/etc/php5/cli/conf.d/20-curl.ini
/etc/php5/cli/php.ini

to compare them I user the diff command like so diff -s /path/to/file1 /path/to/file2.

The errors look like this:

1) ExampleTest::testBasicExample
PDOException: could not find driver

/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/Connector.php:47
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/SQLiteConnector.php:22
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/ConnectionFactory.php:59
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/ConnectionFactory.php:47
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/DatabaseManager.php:127
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/DatabaseManager.php:63
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Migrations/DatabaseMigrationRepository.php:167
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Migrations/DatabaseMigrationRepository.php:135
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Migrations/Migrator.php:366
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Console/Migrations/MigrateCommand.php:93
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Console/Migrations/MigrateCommand.php:56
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Console/Command.php:108
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/symfony/console/Symfony/Component/Console/Command/Command.php:241
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Console/Command.php:96
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Console/Application.php:96
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Foundation/Artisan.php:57
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Support/Facades/Facade.php:208
/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Support/Facades/Facade.php:208
/var/www/smlsspd/app/tests/TestCase.php:70
/var/www/smlsspd/app/tests/TestCase.php:70
/var/www/smlsspd/app/tests/TestCase.php:46
phar:///var/www/smlsspd/phpunit.phar/phpunit/TextUI/Command.php:179
phar:///var/www/smlsspd/phpunit.phar/phpunit/TextUI/Command.php:132

Can you give me a hint or solution to this problem?

Thank you for your time :)

Answer 1

It seems Laravel using SQLite as database for testing. See the backtrace at line 2:

/var/www/smlsspd/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Database/Connectors/SQLiteConnector.php:22

But this seems not installed on your system. So I think you need to install the SQLite driver.

Answer 2

If you are using sqlite for testing you will need php sqlite drivers

For Ubuntu 14.04

sudo apt-get install php5-sqlite
sudo service apache2 restart

In ubuntu 16.04 there is no php5-sqlite

sudo apt-get install php7.0-sqlite
sudo service apache2 restart