What is Composer in Magento 2
2020-01-17 12:48:30

What is Composer in Magento 2

What is Composer?

Composer is a package-manager in Magento 2 at the program level for both PHP and Magento 2 software. To manage dependencies of the Magento 2 application and required libraries, Magento provides a standard format.
Composer offers library autoload capabilities and also allows developers to install PHP applications available on "Packagist,"

The two important commands of the composer are given below:

  • Composer installs - It will automatically run for the very first time when we install any project. By using the "composer install" command, all the dependencies can be fetched from the library.
  • Composer update - It will check what has been updated based on the file, which is named as ‘composer.lock’ file. The ‘composer.lock’ file will contain the information of what was previously installed on the system.

System Requirement

  • The composer can be installed on any platform, mostly on every platform like Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. The latest version of Composer is Composer 1.9.1, which was released on 01 November 2019.
  • The latest version of the composer needs versions of PHP 5.3.2 and above to run correctly. PHP must be installed on the system before the composer is installed. Otherwise, it will not work.

What Composer Does?

The composer works as a package manager for PHP language. This means that it manages many other PHP packages, which are installed on the system, and not just those packages which are intended for Magento. The composer was created and developed in 2011 as an alternative to the aging PEAR, and it has a more modern architecture and feature set, quite similar to NPM for Node.js or Bundler for Ruby. Composer packages are project-specific and installed under the vendor.

The Packagist website shows which package the composer will install.

There is also a list of Magento related packages available on the firegento website.

Packagist is used as a default repository for Magento’s Composer, but you can also add Firegento’s repository by editing your Composer configuration file, which is present in your system.

Advantages of using composer

The composer has the following benefits:

  • In the composer, we can reuse the code without bundling a third-party library.
  • Composer reduces the compatibility issues and extension conflicts by using a component-based architecture with a robust dependency management system.
  • It repackages the Magento Open Source with its other components.
  • It follows the PHP Framework Interoperability Group (FIG) standards.
  • We can use Magento software in a manufacturing environment.
  • Auto-loading is an essential feature of the composer. Based on it in the “composer.json” file, it generates an autoload.php file inside the vendor directory. It ties into the bootstrap process you can see in index.php under the Magento 2. In other words, it automatically includes the required code throughout your store without you giving your time in writing the code.

Conclusion

In this composer tutorial, we went through the basics of setting up a composer, especially working with Magento 2. Now you can add and remove dependencies to and from your Magento 2 extension with ease. There's a lot more to the composer than this tutorial states, and the official documentation details all the intricacies that you may need to become acquainted with it are given in the hyperlink.