Composer command for development

15 Aug 2015

A quick cheatsheet for composer command

composer require vendor/package:version
  • This is for situation where the package is not yet in the composer.json file
  • This command will then add the package into the composer.json and retrieve the corresponding package, then update the composer.lock

composer install
  • This is for situation where there is a composer.json and composer.lock
  • This command will only look into the composer.lock and install the modules as of the lock file

composer update [vendor/package]
  • This is for situation where one would like to update the module according to the composer.json
  • This command will look at the composer.json and retrieve up-to-date module qualified in the given version
  • If the version qualification is 5.0.*, the current local version (stored in composer.lock) is 5.0.1, and the up-to-date version is 5.0.2. Running this command will update that module to 5.0.2 in local.
  • The composer.lock wll get updated to reflect that change.