Composer Dependency Manager

Introduction

Composer is PHP’s most commonly used dependency manager. It’s analogous to npm in Node, pip for Python, or NuGet for .NET.

Syntax

php path/to/composer.phar [command] [options] [arguments]

Parameters

Parameter | Details |
—— | —— |
license | Defines the type of license you want to use in the Project. |
authors | Defines the authors of the project, as well as the author details. |
support | Defines the support emails, irc channel, and various links. |
require | Defines the actual dependencies as well as the package versions. |
require-dev | Defines the packages necessary for developing the project. |
suggest | Defines the package suggestions, i.e. packages which can help if installed. |
autoload | Defines the autoloading policies of the project. |
autoload-dev | Defines the autoloading policies for developing the project. |

Remarks

Autoloading will only work for libraries that specify autoload information. Most libraries do and will adhere to a standard such as PSR-0 or PSR-4.

Helpful Links

Packagist – Browse available packages (which you can install with Composer).
Official Documentation
Official Getting Started guide

Few Suggestions

Disable xdebug when running Composer.
Do not run Composer as root. Packages are not to be trusted.

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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