Installing local composer packages

Published in PHP, Composer on Jun 17, 2022

This tutorial will guide you on how to install a composer package in one of your other applications, typically used when working locally.

In this scenario my application is called demo/ and example/ is my package.

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1// Folder Structure
2- ~/Sites
3  - demo/composer.json
4  - example/composer.json

// Folder Structure
- ~/Sites
  - demo/composer.json
  - example/composer.json

Your composer package

The composer package I created is called josezenem/example, the contents of the file can be found here:

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 1{
 2    "name": "josezenem/example",
 3    "type": "library",
 4    "license": "MIT",
 5    "autoload": {
 6        "psr-4": {
 7            "Josezenem\\Example\\": "src/"
 8        }
 9    },
10    "authors": [
11        {
12            "name": "Jose Jimenez"
13        }
14    ],
15    "require": {}
16}

{
    "name": "josezenem/example",
    "type": "library",
    "license": "MIT",
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "Josezenem\\Example\\": "src/"
        }
    },
    "authors": [
        {
            "name": "Jose Jimenez"
        }
    ],
    "require": {}
}

Telling demo where to find the package

Next I have a directory called demo/ which holds the application that will import the package.

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 1{
 2    "name": "josezenem/demo",
 3    "type": "library",
 4    "license": "MIT",
 5    "autoload": {
 6        "psr-4": {
 7            "App\\": "app/"
 8        }
 9    },
10    "authors": [
11        {
12            "name": "Jose Jimenez"
13        }
14    ],
15    "require": {}
16}

{
    "name": "josezenem/demo",
    "type": "library",
    "license": "MIT",
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "App\\": "app/"
        }
    },
    "authors": [
        {
            "name": "Jose Jimenez"
        }
    ],
    "require": {}
}

The changes we will make is add the required package

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1"require": {
2    "josezenem/example": "dev-main"
3}

"require": {
    "josezenem/example": "dev-main"
}

we will add a "repositories" with the type of "path", and the url which is the path to the example package.

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1"repositories": [
2    {
3        "type": "path",
4        "url": "../example"
5    }
6],

"repositories": [
    {
        "type": "path",
        "url": "../example"
    }
],

It should look like this:

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 1{
 2    "name": "josezenem/demo",
 3    "type": "library",
 4    "license": "MIT",
 5    "autoload": {
 6        "psr-4": {
 7            "App\\": "app/"
 8        }
 9    },
10    "authors": [
11        {
12            "name": "Jose Jimenez"
13        }
14    ],
15    "repositories": [
16        {
17            "type": "path",
18            "url": "../example"
19        }
20    ],
21    "require": {
22        "josezenem/example": "dev-main"
23    }
24}

{
    "name": "josezenem/demo",
    "type": "library",
    "license": "MIT",
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "App\\": "app/"
        }
    },
    "authors": [
        {
            "name": "Jose Jimenez"
        }
    ],
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "path",
            "url": "../example"
        }
    ],
    "require": {
        "josezenem/example": "dev-main"
    }
}

Once this is all complete, you can run composer install or composer update josezenem/example which will import your package locally via symlink.

composer package josezenem/example