Using Composer

Overview

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP akin to npm for Node and Bundler for Ruby.

Composer is provided with hosting accounts on all v5+ platforms. On an older platform? Request a platform migration! This guide covers installing a local copy of Composer on your account.

Installing

You may download the latest version from its web site using its installation process. Login to the terminal, and run the following command:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

A copy of Composer, as a PHP archive, will be downloaded to your current directory. Composer may  now be invoked from the current directory as follows:

php composer.phar

To create a global composer command, see the next section:

Creating a “composer” command

This process will download Composer, move it to /usr/local/bin, and create an alias:

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin
echo 'alias composer="php /usr/local/bin/composer.phar"' >> ~/.bash_profile

Log out of the terminal, then log back in. Type composer to run the Composer application. To upgrade Composer again in the future, just run lines 1 and 2 (ignore echo ... >> ~/.bash_profile).

See also

• Composer documentation