How to obtain the database name from the current doctrine connection in Symfony 1.4

In Symfony 1.4 there were a lot of useful features that were documented and used by everyone back then. Just as many other frameworks of the time, there was a Connection string (data source name) where you needed to specify the database name, the address and the password, in the case of Symfony 1.4, this information was stored in the app/config/databases.yml file under the param.dsn key of the connection name:

# You can find more information about this file on the symfony website:
# http://www.symfony-project.org/reference/1_4/en/07-Databases

all:
  doctrine:
    class: sfDoctrineDatabase
    param:
      dsn:      mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydbname
      username: root
      password: 12345

This was of course one way to do it, using the mentioned DSN. However, there were as well configurations where you can easily find the connection parameters as simple properties in the YML file like this:

# You can find more information about this file on the symfony website:
# http://www.symfony-project.org/reference/1_4/en/07-Databases

all:
  doctrine:
    class: sfPropelDatabase
    param:
      # Database vendor
      phptype: mysql
      # Database host
      hostspec: localhost
      # Database name
      database: mydbname
      # Database username
      username: root
      # Database password
      password: 12345
      # Database port
      port: 3306
      # Database encoding
      encoding: utf8      
      # Use persistent connections
      persistent: true

No matter in which format is your connection string, in this article I will explain to you how to easily obtain the database name and other parameters of the connection in Symfony 1.4.

DSN Format

If your connection string is in the data source name format, you may obtain it by parsing this parameter with some code. In this case, we are going to obtain it from a simple controller. If you simply want to obtain the database name with a couple of lines of code, you may use the following code:

<?php

class exampleActions extends sfActions
{
    public function executeIndex(sfWebRequest $request)
    {   
        // 1. Get current connection
        $sfCurrentConnection = Doctrine_Manager::getInstance()->getCurrentConnection();

        // Or alternatively, obtain a connection by its name
        // $connectionName = "doctrine";
        // $sfCurrentConnection = Doctrine_Manager::getInstance()->getConnection($connectionName);
        
        // 2. Obtain connection parameters
        $currentConnectionOptions = $sfCurrentConnection->getOptions();

        // array(
        //   "dsn" => "mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydbname",
        //   "username" => "myusername",
        //   "password" => "12345",
        //   "other" => array()
        // )
        var_dump($currentConnectionOptions);
        
        // 3. Obtain the dsn parameter and parse it roughly with parse_ini_string
        $sdsn = (string) $sfCurrentConnection->getOption('dsn');
        $connectionData = parse_ini_string(str_replace(";", "\n", parse_url($sdsn)["path"]));

        // $connectionData Data will contain the following parameters
        // 
        // array(
        //    "host" => "localhost",
        //    "dbname" => "mydbname",
        //)

        var_dump($connectionData);
    } 
}

Parameters Format

Although this format isn't quite common, especially because you need to use Propel as ORM, you may obtain as well the parameters of the connection using the following code:

<?php

class exampleActions extends sfActions
{
    public function executeIndex(sfWebRequest $request)
    {   
        // 1. Get current connection
        $sfCurrentConnection = Doctrine_Manager::getInstance()->getCurrentConnection();

        // Or alternatively, obtain a connection by its name
        // $connectionName = "doctrine";
        // $sfCurrentConnection = Doctrine_Manager::getInstance()->getConnection($connectionName);
        
        // 2. Obtain connection parameters
        $currentConnectionOptions = $sfCurrentConnection->getOptions();


        // Obtain the data from the array or directly from the object
        var_dump($currentConnectionOptions);
        // $dbname = $sfCurrentConnection->getOption("database");

        // array(
        //    "phptype" => "mysql",
        //    "hostspec" => "localhost",
        //    "database" => "mydbname",
        //    "username" => "login",
        //    "password" => "passwd",
        //    "port" => 80,
        //    "encoding" => "utf8",
        //    "persistent" => true
        // )
    } 
}

Happy coding ❤️!