---
title: "Drivers — Certificates for Laravel | Roundly"
description: "The five shipped drivers — kubernetes, acme, filesystem, null and array — what each can do and how to pick one per call."
url: https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source/docs/certificates-for-laravel/drivers
language: en
---

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[Certificates for Laravel](https://roundly-consulting.com/open-source/docs/certificates-for-laravel.md)

# Drivers

Providers are resolved by CertificateProviderManager, a standard Laravel manager behind Certificates::driver() and Certificates::extend(). config('certificates.default') picks the driver when none is named; using() on the builder or a driver argument overrides it per call:

```php
use RoundlyConsulting\Certificates\Facades\Certificates;

// config/certificates.php → 'default' => 'acme', or per call:
Certificates::for('app.example.com')->using('acme')->issue();

Certificates::driver();          // the default provider (CertificateProvider)
Certificates::driver('null');    // a specific provider instance
Certificates::get();             // Collection<int, RemoteCertificate> from the default provider

certificates()->driver('acme');  // the same through the helper, which returns CertificatesManager
```

| Driver | Class | Multi-domain | Live status | Use it for |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `kubernetes` | KubernetesProvider | yes | yes | cert-manager in a cluster — the default. |
| `acme` | AcmeProvider | yes | yes | Real certificates from Let’s Encrypt or any ACME v2 CA. |
| `filesystem` | LocalFilesystemProvider | yes | yes | PEM files on a Storage disk; self-signed for development. |
| `null` | NullProvider | no | no | A no-op where no certificate backend exists. |
| `array` | ArrayProvider | yes | yes | In-memory backend for tests. |

Multi-domain means the driver implements ProvisionsMultipleDomains and receives the full SAN list; others get the primary domain only. Live status means it implements ReportsCertificateStatus — the registry reads expiry from it, and statusReport() returns null for drivers without it.

Certificates::driver() — and provider() on CertificateProviderManager — throw UnknownProviderException for an unknown name. The CertificateProvider contract is also bound in the container to the default driver.

The null driver provisions nothing — with the registry present, its rows get the fallback expiry of validForDays (default 90). Use it where no backend exists; in tests reach for array or the fake.

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