SQLite Cloud

PHP / Laravel Quick Start Guide

In this quickstart, we will show you how to get started with SQLite Cloud and PHP by building a simple Laravel application that connects to and reads from a SQLite Cloud database.

  1. Set up a SQLite Cloud account
  • If you haven’t already, sign up for a SQLite Cloud account and create a new project.
  • In this guide, we will use the sample datasets that come pre-loaded with SQLite Cloud.
  1. Create a Laravel app
  • If you haven’t already done so, install PHP, Laravel, and Composer.
  • Create a new Laravel project.
composer create-project laravel/laravel sqlc-quickstart
  • In the project directory, start Laravel’s local dev server.
cd sqlc-quickstart
php artisan serve
  • Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000 to see your Laravel app.
  1. Configure a Blade frontend
  • Open another terminal. Again in your project dir, install Laravel Breeze.
    • By default, Breeze uses simple Blade templates for your app’s view layer. Blade is a templating engine included with Laravel. HTML is rendered server-side so you can include dynamic content from your database.
composer require laravel/breeze --dev
php artisan breeze:install blade
  • Start a Vite dev server that will hot reload updates to your app. (No need to load the provided localhost link, just keep the Vite server running.)
npm run dev
  • Refresh your app in the browser. Click the “Register” link at the top right. Register an account and log in. Save your credentials.
  1. App setup
  • Open another terminal. Again in your project dir, run php artisan make:model -rc Album to create an Eloquent Model (which we’ll ignore) and a HTTP resource controller: app/Http/Controllers/AlbumController.php. We’ll add functionality to this file to process app requests and return responses later.
  • Replace the code in routes/web.php with the following snippet to add a route named albums.index.
    • Run php artisan route:list to view all your app routes.
    • albums.index will route GET requests to the albums endpoint to AlbumController’s index method (will set up later).
<?php

use App\Http\Controllers\AlbumController;
use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Route;

Route::resource('albums', AlbumController::class)
    ->only(['index']);
  • Create a new file resources/views/albums/index.blade.php and copy in the following code to create your Blade view template.
<h1>Albums</h1>
<ul>
@foreach ($albums as $album)
    <li>{{ $album['albumTitle'] }} by {{ $album['artistName'] }}</li>
@endforeach
</ul>
  1. Install the SQLite Cloud SDK
composer require sqlitecloud/sqlitecloud
  1. Query data
  • Replace the code in app/Http/Controllers/AlbumController.php with the following snippet.
  • In your SQLite Cloud account dashboard, click on Show connection strings, copy the Connection String, and replace <your-connection-string> below.
  • The index method will:
    • connect to and query the database,
    • create an array of arrays albums containing each returned album’s title and artist,
    • use the global view helper to pass albums to your view template stored at resources/views/albums/index.blade.php (and already set up to list the data), and
    • return the completed Blade view to the browser.
<?php

namespace App\Http\Controllers;

use Illuminate\View\View;
use SQLiteCloud\SQLiteCloudClient;
use SQLiteCloud\SQLiteCloudRowset;

class AlbumController extends Controller
{
    public function index(): View
    {
        $sqlite = new SQLiteCloudClient();
        $sqlite->connectWithString('<your-connection-string>');

        $db_name = 'chinook.sqlite';
        $db_query = 'SELECT albums.AlbumId as id, albums.Title as title, artists.name as artist FROM albums INNER JOIN artists WHERE artists.ArtistId = albums.ArtistId LIMIT 20';

        $sqlite->execute("USE DATABASE {$db_name}");
        
        $rowset = $sqlite->execute($db_query);

        $sqlite->disconnect();

        $albums = [];

        for($i = 0; $i < $rowset->nrows; $i++) {
            $albums[] = [
                'albumTitle' => $rowset->value($i, 1),
                'artistName' => $rowset->value($i, 2),
            ];
        }
        
        return view('albums.index', [ 
            'albums' => $albums
        ]);
    }
}
  1. View your app
  • Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/albums to see your app data.
  1. FOLLOW-UP: This Quickstart goes a bit deeper into the framework than the other Quickstarts since Laravel requires more boilerplate to get up-and-running with a simple app.

If you’re new to Laravel and want to learn more, we referenced the following Laravel Tutorial pages extensively when writing this Quickstart:

And that’s it! You’ve successfully built a PHP / Laravel app that reads data from a SQLite Cloud database.