Using PHP Composer

Intro

Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP. By including it in Wappler and enabling it, Composer will manage (install/update) the libraries your project depends on (for example Stripe, AWS, etc.). Using package managers like PHP Composer provides several benefits, including easy management of dependencies, version control and simplified installation and updates.

Enable PHP Composer

You can enable and use Composer in your PHP projects.

*As of 4 May 2023, this is still a beta feature, so you need to switch to Beta extensions channel in your Wappler settings. Also, to avoid breaking your live apps, we recommend testing it on your development environment:

After you switched to Beta channel, open your project settings:

And then enable the Use Composer option:

Click Save:

A system check needs to be performed and the new PHP packages need to be installed, so click Yes:

You can see the progress at the bottom, a success notification will be displayed when the packages have been installed:

And you are done! Composer is now enabled for your project and it will manage the dependencies for you.

How does Composer interact with current projects if you enable it? Should it only be added to new projects?

You can enable it also on existing php projects, it will manage the dependencies better for you.

You can also disable it afterwards and it will restore the previous state.

Do note it is in beta now, so try it out first on test sites before using it in full production.

1 Like

Does that mean if I enable it for current projects it isn’t going to check all the AWS and Stripe files that are not even needed in the project, making publishing a lot faster?

Exactly it will remove those files as unused.

3 Likes

That is awesome! You guys have been hard at work! Thank you.