Composer installer package for Lithium PHP

Shakeing up Composer!

There's been some movement towards centralizing Framework installers for composer. The primary project is called baton but there has been some interest in the community that Composer adopt it as it's own.

If this happens then, obviously, this project will become irrelevant.

I support this request, you should too! Check out Baton, it's swell!

Notice

This may look like a lithium library, however it is not.

This is a composer installer package that installs composer packages of type li3-libraries to the proper place in lithium.

This means you do not need to install it in your app, you just need to require it in the composer file of your li3 plugin.

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Set up your own li3 composer plugin

I'm going to go ahead and assume, for now, that you know how to submit a package to Packagist

If not don't worry, I'll outline briefly how to do that in a bit.

Create your composer.json installer file at the root of your plugin

LITHIUM_APP_PATH . "app/libraries/li3_myplugin/composer.json"

Make sure you require this package and ensure that the package type for your plugin is set to li3-libraries.

Here is an example composer.json file (based off of my smarty plugin)

{
	"name": "joseym/li3_smarty",
	"type": "li3-libraries",
	"description": "Smarty PHP plugin for Lithium PHP ... if you're into that sort of thing",
	"keywords": ["template engine", "smarty", "lithium"],
	"homepage": "https://github.com/joseym/li3_smarty",
	"license": "GNU General Public License",
	"authors": [
		{
			"name": "Josey Morton",
			"email": "[email protected]",
			"homepage": "https://github.com/joseym"
		},
		{
			"name": "Alex Denvir",
			"email": "[email protected]",
			"homepage": "https://github.com/alexdenvir"
		}
	],

	"require": {
		"php": ">=5.3",
		"joseym/li3_installer": "master"
	}

}

The above should be pretty self explanatory, the primary things to notice are the type key and the require hash.

The smarty plugin requires this installer, therefore when you tell your app to require the smarty plugin Composer will automatically grab and install the li3_installer package if it doesn't already exist, otherwise it will just use it.

Using composer and the installer

Here's an example apps composer.json file, it will install li3_smarty.

{
	"name": "lithium-dev",
	"version": "0.1.0",
	"config": {
		"vendor-dir": "libraries/_source"
	},
	"require": {
		"joseym/li3_smarty": "master"
	}
}

Ok, so first things first, the config.vendor-dir tells packages to install in the libraries/_source directory.

I like to keep 3rd party things here (I like to keep my libraries directory "li3" friendly, only).

Any non-lithium composer packages will now be installed in libraries/_source

All li3-libraries packages will be installed in libraries/li3_packagename regardless of what is set in config.vendor-dir.

there is no law stating that this has to be the convention but it makes sense to me

Installing dependencies with composer

In the root of your project (where composer is installed) run the following

php composer.phar install

It should take a second to grab the dependancies but then you should see something like this:

Installing dependencies
  - Package joseym/li3_installer (dev-master)
    Cloning 4f048b2888adbfbe8b8c8b5fdbf7f46ae2f95654

  - Package joseym/li3_smarty (dev-master)
    Cloning 9ab5b8e6b11e6d68f606e3882d4b4503821a1996

li3_smarty will now be in your libraries directory.

In libraries you will also see a directory with my vendor name joseym. Inside of joseym you will find the installer, li3_installer.

Adding your plugin to packagist

Ok, so you have your plugin configured for composer (got composer.json in the root of the plugin), good!

In order to submit the package to packagist you need to follow these instructions:

1. Register an account with packagist
2. Login and Submit your package - packages source control repositories, so in the case of li3_smarty I'm going to use my read-only git url.
3. Enter the url in the Repository URL field: git://github.com/joseym/li3_smarty.git

Packagist will then try to grab your repo and ensure that the composer.json file is valid.

You're good to go!

Extras

In order to have your packagist repo automatically update whenever you push you'll want ot set up a github hook.

This is easy, you enter your packagist username (if different from github) and the API Token they provide in githubs packagist hook form and check the active checkbox.

• New to Composer? Read some docs
• This effort was inspired by an article by Michael Nitschinger
• I wrote an article explaining why, while Michael's efforts were good, some other problems occurred

Have questions or having problems? Submit an issue!

Props!

I want to thank my super-awesome employeer, Vitals, for sponsoring this (and other) Lithium library development efforts as well as nwp for not yelling when I want to work on some plugins, hell - even encouraging.

Its nice to work for people that understand the value of giving back to the community that offers so much to us.