What is Composer?

To not reinvent the wheel you can reuse code in different projects with plugins, packages, frameworks and similar libraries. Developing and managing release versions of dependencies in projects on your own can quickly become cumbersome.

Composer is de-facto standard command line tool for managing dependencies in PHP.

Packages can be located and developed separately in any public open source or private proprietary location. Main repository for open source packages is Packagist.org.

Installation

Download and install composer.phar Phar (PHP Archive) file according to the documentation. Recommended is to install it globally so you can call composer from any folder:

$ composer command [options] [arguments]

Usage

Let’s check some basic Composer usage.

Files and folders in PHP project

Composer will add and use the following files in your project:

• composer.json - Metadata file with information about dependent packages versions autoloading your PHP classes and more.
• composer.lock - After adding dependencies Composer creates this metadata file with locked dependency versions for project. If you’re working on package, don’t include it in the code repository. If you’re working on application, add it to code repository.
• vendor/ - Automatically managed folder with installed libraries. Don’t include it in the code repository.
• vendor/autoload.php - Automatically managed PHP classes autoload mapping file.

composer.json

When starting a new project you can use the interactive init command to create composer.json file:

$ composer init

composer.json is located in the root folder of your project:

{
    "name": "vendor/project-name",
    "description": "Demo application",
    "type": "project",
    "require": {
        "php": ">=5.6.0",
        "nesbot/carbon": "~1.14"
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "phpunit/phpunit": "5.2.*"
    },
    "license": "MIT",
    "authors": [
        {
            "name": "John Doe",
            "email": "john.doe@domain.tld"
        }
    ],
    "minimum-stability": "dev"
}

Managing dependencies

To add a new dependency to your project without editing composer.json use the require command in project folder. As an example, below command adds Swift Mailer - library for sending emails:

$ composer require swiftmailer/swiftmailer

For updating project dependencies, use update command:

$ composer update

To install project from scratch when you start working on a project:

$ composer install

Tips

To improve performance in production optimize the autoloader:

$ composer dump-autoload --optimize

To test if update or install command will have issues use the --dry-run option. No changes will be made to the project dependencies.

$ composer update --dry-run --profile --verbose

See also

Make sure to read the official documentation to learn Composer in details. Other useful links to check:

• Climb - Tool that finds newer versions of project dependencies.
• Composer as a service - Give your composer.json, get the corresponding vendor.zip, fast.
• Melody - One-file Composer scripts.