Programming
March 19, 2019
What is Composer in PHP/Laravel? How to Install PHP Composer
Most of you already heard a term "Composer in PHP" but only few of you actually know what actually
it is , composer advantages, how it works , how to install composer and finally
it’s different commands like composer install, composer update. Well don’t
worry as this article going to answer all your questions regarding composer.
Moreover, you will also see the practical example of using composer in Laravel.
Before understanding about composer in PHP we have to first know
about what is "Dependency management". Dependency management simply means
managing the dependencies on which the project depends.
Suppose you are
working with images and you need a library to manipulate the images in a
better and easy way like creating, editing images, adding watermarks on it etc.
To achieve this task we can use PHP library named "Intervention", We have to
download the library and manually adding this in our code.
For small projects adding libraries manually is not a
huge task, But if you have large projects then manually adding them is not a
right way to do. Moreover, if you are working with PHP framework like Laravel
then you know that Laravel uses different libraries for different purposes i.e
authentication etc. Because of the lot of dependencies on which Laravel depends,
Recommend way of installing laravel is through "Composer".
Composer is a dependency manager software which manages the
PHP project dependency on a fly. The project should have composer.json file
where all the required dependencies are listed, Composer install them automatically.
To use composer in PHP projects, You have to download and install composer
in your computer first. Here are the steps:
1-First download the composer
2-Now open the executable file to install it
3-Make sure to check developer mode as this will install the
composer globally and you don’t have to add the composer path in environment variable to use it.
4-Now you have to choose the command line PHP executable file.
5- If you are using xammp then click browse and navigate to
the root path of your xammp installation and open the PHP folder where you will
find a executable file named php.exe, Select it and click next
6- Now click next without checking proxy server as generally
it is not needed (unless you are using some sort of VPN)
7-Now click finish and you are done with the installation of
composer.
Using Composer in PHP/Laravel:
Now we will see a little quick demo on using composer in laravel.
1-Installing any package with composer is just a game of one
line, enter one command in command prompt hit enter and from here composer will
do the rest of the magic.
2-There are two ways to install Laravel using composer
First way:
1- For installing laravel navigate to the folder where you
want to install laravel using cmd.
2-We will use the following command to install laravel: composer create-project laravel/laravel
{directory} {version}
4-This command will simply clone the laravel from the GitHub repo directly to your PC.
5- So in my case I ran following command: Composer create-project
laravel/laravel laravel-practicles "5.7.*"
6-I first navigate to my htdocs folder then I ran the above
command.
7-This command installs the laravel in laravel-practicles
folder.
Second way:
1-First, download the laravel installer using composer:
composer global require laravel/installer
2-This command will install the laravel package globally in
our local system
3-Now to create project for laravel again and again we can
just ran following command: laravel new project-name
4-The above command will create a fresh laravel directory in the specified folder
5-This method is fast and i personally like this.
As you know laravel has many dependencies but since we are
using composer to install laravel, All the required dependencies will be automatically installed by composer.
This was the just glimpse of how powerful PHP composer is, I recommend you to use it in your projects when installing any external library as
it will be life savior for you.
Let me know in comments if you have any questions/issues regarding composer in PHP, Thanks.
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