Laravel 5.1 – Checking a Database Connection

Try just getting the underlying PDO instance. If that fails, then Laravel was unable to connect to the database!

use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;

// Test database connection
try {
    DB::connection()->getPdo();
} catch (\Exception $e) {
    die("Could not connect to the database.  Please check your configuration. error:" . $e );
}