I have been running into the same issue for over the past 3 hours. I have uploaded my codeigniter4 project (my first one) to my namecheap shared hosting provider, and unfortunately I have ran into some problems.

The way that I have uploaded my files is this: I made a subdomain and let's call it example.tgsoftware.services. Now namecheap uses cpanel and creates a root folder in my /home/user/ dir called example.tgsoftware.services. So the structure should look like this: /home/user/example.tgsoftware.services

Now I have updated the CI_ENVIRONMENT to production so I don't get any errors, so the page says "Whoops" which is fine because there is not DB connection at the time.

Now whenever I try to run database migrations in the terminal I get this really weird error:

CodeIgniter v4.6.0 Command Line Tool - Server Time: 2025-04-01 09:50:34 UTC+00:00

Running all new migrations...
[CodeIgniter\Database\Exceptions\DatabaseException]
Unable to connect to the database.
Main connection [MySQLi]: Access denied for user ''@'localhost' (using password: NO)
at SYSTEMPATH/Database/BaseConnection.php:467

I have searched the internet of what may be causing it to throw this error but I can't find any solution to my problem with even contacting namecheap support about this.

The only thing I could find about this issue is that it's maybe using my old MySQL user from my local machine and parsed it with the build. But I don't know if that's true or where to change that.

Here is my Database.php code for helping you to maybe identify this problem:

<?php

namespace Config;

use CodeIgniter\Database\Config;

/**
 * Database Configuration
 */
class Database extends Config
{
    /**
     * The directory that holds the Migrations and Seeds directories.
    */
    public string $filesPath = APPPATH . 'Database' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;

    /**
     * Lets you choose which connection group to use if no other is specified.
    */
    public string $defaultGroup = 'default';

    /**
     * The default database connection.
     *
     * @var array<string, mixed>
     * 
     * 
    */
    public array $default = [
        'dsn'          => '',
        'hostname'     => 'hostname', 
        'username'     => 'user',    
        'password'     => 'password', 
        'database'     => 'database', 
        'dbdriver'     => 'MySQLi',
        'port'         => 3306,
        'dbprefix' => '',
        'pconnect' => FALSE,
        'db_debug' => (ENVIRONMENT !== 'production'),
        'cache_on' => FALSE,
        'cachedir' => '',
        'char_set' => 'utf8',
        'dbcollat' => 'utf8_general_ci',
        'swap_pre' => '',
        'encrypt' => FALSE,
        'compress' => FALSE,
        'stricton' => FALSE,
        'failover' => array(),
        'save_queries' => TRUE
    ];

    /**
     * This database connection is used when running PHPUnit database tests.
     *
     * @var array<string, mixed>
     */
    public array $tests = [
        'DSN'         => '',
        'hostname'    => '127.0.0.1',
        'username'    => '',
        'password'    => '',
        'database'    => ':memory:',
        'DBDriver'    => 'SQLite3',
        'DBPrefix'    => 'db_',  
        'pConnect'    => false,
        'DBDebug'     => true,
        'charset'     => 'utf8',
        'DBCollat'    => '',
        'swapPre'     => '',
        'encrypt'     => false,
        'compress'    => false,
        'strictOn'    => false,
        'failover'    => [],
        'port'        => 3306,
        'foreignKeys' => true,
        'busyTimeout' => 1000,
        'dateFormat'  => [
            'date'     => 'd-m-Y',
            'datetime' => 'd-m-Y H:i:s',
            'time'     => 'H:i:s',
        ],
    ];

    public function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct();

        // Ensure that we always set the database group to 'tests' if
        // we are currently running an automated test suite, so that
        // we don't overwrite live data on accident.
        if (ENVIRONMENT === 'testing') {
            $this->defaultGroup = 'tests';
        }
    }
}

I on purpose did not use the .env configuration for this and have tried it using only the .env and setting the Database.php file to default.

Does somebody know any fixes related to my issue?

PS. For running my project I'm running this on macOS, using PHP spark to serve my CodeIgniter project. And my db is running as standard on my machine.

I have been running into the same issue for over the past 3 hours. I have uploaded my codeigniter4 project (my first one) to my namecheap shared hosting provider, and unfortunately I have ran into some problems.

The way that I have uploaded my files is this: I made a subdomain and let's call it example.tgsoftware.services. Now namecheap uses cpanel and creates a root folder in my /home/user/ dir called example.tgsoftware.services. So the structure should look like this: /home/user/example.tgsoftware.services

Now I have updated the CI_ENVIRONMENT to production so I don't get any errors, so the page says "Whoops" which is fine because there is not DB connection at the time.

Now whenever I try to run database migrations in the terminal I get this really weird error:

CodeIgniter v4.6.0 Command Line Tool - Server Time: 2025-04-01 09:50:34 UTC+00:00

Running all new migrations...
[CodeIgniter\Database\Exceptions\DatabaseException]
Unable to connect to the database.
Main connection [MySQLi]: Access denied for user ''@'localhost' (using password: NO)
at SYSTEMPATH/Database/BaseConnection.php:467

I have searched the internet of what may be causing it to throw this error but I can't find any solution to my problem with even contacting namecheap support about this.

The only thing I could find about this issue is that it's maybe using my old MySQL user from my local machine and parsed it with the build. But I don't know if that's true or where to change that.

Here is my Database.php code for helping you to maybe identify this problem:

<?php

namespace Config;

use CodeIgniter\Database\Config;

/**
 * Database Configuration
 */
class Database extends Config
{
    /**
     * The directory that holds the Migrations and Seeds directories.
    */
    public string $filesPath = APPPATH . 'Database' . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR;

    /**
     * Lets you choose which connection group to use if no other is specified.
    */
    public string $defaultGroup = 'default';

    /**
     * The default database connection.
     *
     * @var array<string, mixed>
     * 
     * 
    */
    public array $default = [
        'dsn'          => '',
        'hostname'     => 'hostname', 
        'username'     => 'user',    
        'password'     => 'password', 
        'database'     => 'database', 
        'dbdriver'     => 'MySQLi',
        'port'         => 3306,
        'dbprefix' => '',
        'pconnect' => FALSE,
        'db_debug' => (ENVIRONMENT !== 'production'),
        'cache_on' => FALSE,
        'cachedir' => '',
        'char_set' => 'utf8',
        'dbcollat' => 'utf8_general_ci',
        'swap_pre' => '',
        'encrypt' => FALSE,
        'compress' => FALSE,
        'stricton' => FALSE,
        'failover' => array(),
        'save_queries' => TRUE
    ];

    /**
     * This database connection is used when running PHPUnit database tests.
     *
     * @var array<string, mixed>
     */
    public array $tests = [
        'DSN'         => '',
        'hostname'    => '127.0.0.1',
        'username'    => '',
        'password'    => '',
        'database'    => ':memory:',
        'DBDriver'    => 'SQLite3',
        'DBPrefix'    => 'db_',  
        'pConnect'    => false,
        'DBDebug'     => true,
        'charset'     => 'utf8',
        'DBCollat'    => '',
        'swapPre'     => '',
        'encrypt'     => false,
        'compress'    => false,
        'strictOn'    => false,
        'failover'    => [],
        'port'        => 3306,
        'foreignKeys' => true,
        'busyTimeout' => 1000,
        'dateFormat'  => [
            'date'     => 'd-m-Y',
            'datetime' => 'd-m-Y H:i:s',
            'time'     => 'H:i:s',
        ],
    ];

    public function __construct()
    {
        parent::__construct();

        // Ensure that we always set the database group to 'tests' if
        // we are currently running an automated test suite, so that
        // we don't overwrite live data on accident.
        if (ENVIRONMENT === 'testing') {
            $this->defaultGroup = 'tests';
        }
    }
}

I on purpose did not use the .env configuration for this and have tried it using only the .env and setting the Database.php file to default.

Does somebody know any fixes related to my issue?

PS. For running my project I'm running this on macOS, using PHP spark to serve my CodeIgniter project. And my db is running as standard on my machine.

• php
• codeigniter
• mysqli
• namecheap

• 2 According to the error message, the connection attempt was made with an empty user name, and no password at all. – C3roe Commented Apr 1 at 10:34
• yes, but i have set them in my database.php, so what could be causing this error. Because i can't see any mistakes with the code? – Tygo Iedema Commented Apr 1 at 11:15

1 Answer 1

Most frameworks use config caching when in production mode. Not sure if this will fix it but you might want to read over this documentation.

https://codeigniter/user_guide/concepts/factories.html#factories-config-caching