{"id":1368,"date":"2022-10-13T10:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-13T15:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/racmanuel.dev\/?p=1368"},"modified":"2022-10-12T22:46:39","modified_gmt":"2022-10-13T03:46:39","slug":"como-usar-composer-en-un-plugin-de-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racmanuel.dev\/en\/como-usar-composer-en-un-plugin-de-wordpress\/","title":{"rendered":"How to use Composer in a WordPress plugin?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before starting the tutorial, it must be clarified that I am referring to Composer, the famous PHP dependency manager used in frameworks such as Laravel, and it has nothing to do with Visual Composer (a WordPress plugin for visual layout).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now that it is clear we will not be discussing Visual Composer, let us begin with the basics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is Composer?<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows us, as programmers, to declare the libraries on which our projects depend, and Composer will manage them (install \/ update).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the purpose of Composer in a WordPress plugin?<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Imagine you are developing a WordPress plugin and you have several PHP libraries such as CMB2: Custom Meta Boxes, Advanced Custom Fields, and some libraries for generating PDFs or Excel files, PHPUnit, etc. The most common way to integrate these libraries is to go to the official website, download the latest version, and then copy them into your plugin folder. But...<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can you imagine that in the future you need to maintain the plugin, or perhaps one of the libraries you used in the plugin is no longer compatible with the server's PHP version and you need to update the library? Well, Composer saves us from many of these types of problems, since through our command console we can update all libraries and even install them all, without needing to download them one by one, copying and pasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to install Composer?<\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Open a new tab in your browser and search on Google.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We will type composer<\/code><\/strong> and go to the first Google result, making sure the website address is: https:\/\/getcomposer.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Click on the download button.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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We will see a new page and click on Composer-Setup.exe.<\/a> Once the download of the .exe file is complete, we must run it. It will request some administrator permissions; we will click accept.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We must click on the \u201cNext\u201d button.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next, it asks us to indicate the path to the PHP executable. In my case, since I am working with:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Laragon, the path is C:\\laragon\\bin\\php\\php-version\\php.exe<\/span><\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    If you are using a local server such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n