How to install modern PHP packages? - php

How do I install modern PHP packages? I haven't used PHP for 5 years so everything seems new.
In particular I'm trying to install https://github.com/pda/pheanstalk. I downloaded the code, but when I try to
require_once 'Pheanstalk/Pheanstalk.php'
I get an error:
Fatal error: Interface 'Pheanstalk\PheanstalkInterface' not found
in /web/Pheanstalk/Pheanstalk.php
I found I should use use. When I try use Pheanstalk\Pheanstalk I get this error:
Fatal error: Class 'Pheanstalk\Pheanstalk' not found in /web/test.php on line 5
Can't I just download and use PHP code anymore like back in the day? How do I get these modern packages working? Packages seem to mention composer. Should I use that? Can't I just download code and use it? I don't want to depend on composer or any other package manager. I just want to run code.

The modern way of installing packages is to use Composer.
It might seem scary at first, but it isn't such a big deal.
You should also be able to download and use the package yourself, if the creator made that possible, it should be explained in the documentation however.
There might be no "easy" way to install your package without composer if the package creator intended it that way. For this package in particular, the only instructions are for Composer, so it's safe to assume that it's the easiest way to install it.
Of course it's possible to use his code directly, but you'll need to know what you're doing and understand namespaces.

Related

About using of packages that your composer library suggests

I am developing some composer php library.
And I want to provide library users to use class that uses some external package. I suggest this package in the relevant composer section.
Should I check that the composer's suggested package is really installed?
Will there be an error if the user just install my library without suggestions, but will not use this class that dependent from not installed package?
I checked some popular packages and seems to be they just use suggested packages as if they are already installed.
For example: https://github.com/Seldaek/monolog/blob/c861fcba2ca29404dc9e617eedd9eff4616986b8/src/Monolog/Handler/ElasticsearchHandler.php
This monolog class just uses Elasticsearch classes as usual, but Elasticsearch is a suggested package and may be not installed.
The handlers use the other packages as if they were installed - but keep in mind that Monolog does not use each and every handler automatically. If you define that such a handler (in your example: the one for ElasticSearch) is used, it is up to the user to know how to handle this.
As you can see in the constructor of that method, it is not even instantiable if you don't have a package for ElasticSearch installed - the code example in that class helps to understand this situation. So, no, this class is not usable without having another package installed, but the error will be thrown by your classloader. No need for the package to check for this

I want install phpexcel laravel but phpexcel is abandoned

I want to install phpoffice/phpexcel in My Project.
When composer install or composer update, i receive error:
Package phpoffice/phpexcel is abandoned, you should avoid using it.
Use phpoffice/phpspreadsheet instead.
What is wrong with my project? Please help me. My project use PHP version 7.1.3 and Laravel version 5.7
It means the project is not being maintained. you can still use if you want to.
That message you are getting is just a warning, not an error so there is nothing wrong with your project. So you could ignore the warning and continue using the package with your current code.
However, as the message said you should avoid using it because the package might stop working properly if you decide to update laravel, php or any other dependencies. And if it does stop working or you encountered a bug, there will no code maintainer to help you solve your issue.
In your case, phpoffice/phpspreadsheet package actually provide a useful entry in their documentation to help you migrate to their package, so you should definitely give it a read as there are quite a few breaking changes if you decide to use their package.

Using PHP Packages without Composer

I'm building an SDK for developers to use to build modules for ecommerce platforms that will consume our API for a new startup.
Obviously it would be ideal to use composer, which I am doing right now. But as I examine most of the ecommerce platforms out there right now, or at least the most popular ones, they don't use composer.
So I'm wondering what's the best way to get all the dependencies all my current packages need and build them into a freestanding SDK.
This way I can have a version that will work for both composer and non-composer enabled platforms.
Is there a standardized way to do this in terms of a design pattern? How would I lay out all the dependency packages in any organized way?
Because those e-commerce platforms don't use composer, that doesn't force you to exclude composer from equation. You can't distribute your package as a plugin/module/whatever for that particular e-commerce platform, but you can still use composer's autoloader in production.
You could prepare the package for deployment on your machine or on a build server, archive the result and distribute the archive.
For the sake of simplicity, my example will assume that you will prepare your package on your local machine:
Create a temporary working directory:
$ mkdir -p ~/.tmp && cd ~/.tmp
Clone your package:
$ git clone <package>
Install dependencies1
$ cd ~/.tmp/<package> && composer.phar install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
or if you do this from an automated tool:
$ cd ~/.tmp/<package> && composer.phar install --no-ansi --no-dev --no-interaction --no-progress --no-scripts --optimize-autoloader
Remove .git directory.
Create the zip/tar archive from ~/.tmp/<package>
Distribute the archive.
Assuming that your package is already a plugin/module for that e-commerce platform, it can be installed as usual from that zip/tar archive.
1) Regarding --optimize-autoloader, please read this answer from Sven, which explains why in some cases doesn't help your application to become faster.
Don't have dependencies!
Yes, seriously. If you'd develop an API client that would use Guzzle as the HTTP client, you'd have to make a choice: Use Guzzle version 3, 4, 5 or 6?
Guzzle 3 is out of maintenance and abandoned. You wouldn't want to use it.
Guzzle 4 is also considered end-of-life, because version 5 came very fast. Nobody really use this version.
This boils down to using either version 5 or 6. But Guzzle is using the same namespace and likely the same class names in both versions, but is incompatible to each other. No matter which version you choose: Your customer will have made the opposite choice - and now you have a codebase where two versions of Guzzle are running at the same time - this will not work.
If you don't have dependencies, but deliver everything within your own codebase, you have all of your code under your control, and are reducing the need to use Composer as a tool to easily install all your dependencies. Your package will have everything already included, it's unlikely that there will be any namespace conflicts.
You'd be able to offer a ZIP file for download. And if you additionally offer a composer.json to allow developers to include your package that way, everyone will be happy.
Update
Now after finding out that everyone thinks I am crazy proposing not to use stuff invented elsewhere, I challenge you to think about the situation once again: You find that you have to produce code that will likely be included in a codebase that is NOT managed with Composer. That means you have no idea what kind of software is put together there.
It may simply be so that you have a version of Guzzle in the existing codebase - undetectable, because there is no composer.json. Now you provide your own package with a bundled Guzzle version (whatever way made it appear there). This will likely crash the entire software at some point because of conflicts, because the autoloading will of course be merged at some point, and then some part of the code will request some Guzzle class to be loaded, which is included twice from two different versions of Guzzle.
WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN IN THIS CASE? THINGS WILL CRASH!
And it is unavoidable that this will happen. Even in the lucky case of being able to use Composer, it will conflict - the software won't crash, but the entire package won't be installed. The good thing is: You will notice this immediately.
If the primary goal is to deliver an API client anyone can use in every situation, without using a dependency manager: Don't have dependencies!
Alternatively, be completely sure that you know which software is already being used, and create a package that will not conflict in any case. However, this is still an effort, because there might be other addons also being installed, which might include conflicting software.
My central point is: If you don't have a dependency manager like Composer being able to manage the dependencies, you are better off NOT to have dependencies in your own code to make it super easy to include your own code in someone else code base.
And the question above clearly states that Composer is not an option in the general case.
Now there is one light at the end of the tunnel: When it comes to general tasks, the PHP-FIG has started to standardize interfaces that should leverage interoperability. For HTTP, the standard is PSR-7.
You COULD provide an API SDK that depends (and brings with it) the PSR-7 interface and requires the user of the SDK to provide a HTTP client that implements this interface.
The problem with this approach I see is that you will still run into trouble if you try to use for example Guzzle for the same reason: The only valid choice now is to use Guzzle 6 for the SDK - what if Guzzle 5 was already used elsewhere? Conflict! The good thing is: You can avoid using Guzzle 6 if you are already using Guzzle 5 by using any other PSR-7 capable HTTP client.

PEAR: Using the framework in a distributable application

I am working on a PHP application that uses many features from PEAR. The app is meant to be distributable kind of like Wordpress but really scaled down.
Now the problem I've run into is that PEAR needs to be installed and configured alongside the PHP server without which my app simply will not function unless the users go through all the painful steps of installing PEAR on their server. Users can very well be newbies or non-technical so it's not an option for them.
Therefore there is a need to somehow package everything PEAR into the application itself. As far as I know it may not be possible.
Are there any alternate solution to this? Any solution at all will help. Thanks..
PEAR installs system wide dependencies which makes things like what you describe hard. Composer on the other hand is exactly what you'd need, because it's a per-project dependency manager with much better support for resolving and installing of dependencies. Basically, compared to Composer, PEAR sucks... it always did, Composer on the other hand rocks!
The first thing I would do for each package you need is to see if it is also provided on https://packagist.org/. If it is, problem solved, include the installation into your build process with composer. If you end up with only a few packages from PEAR, you have several options:
inspire the author to provide it on packagist
make your own mirror on packagist (not recommended but sometimes necessary)
see if the project is on github and install directly from git with composer
install the PEAR package via composer anyways, it's possible.
Short answer: switch to composer!
If you are talking about the PEAR packages or class files, you can put the PEAR packages anywhere you want. Just put the ones you use into a dir within your app dir structure and add that to the include path.

Symfony2.0.15 Doctrine-Fixtures Windows Command Line Fatal Error

Recently started playing around with S2, amazing stuff! A while ago started an online Symfony2 Blog tutorial, however I got stuck on the page with Doctrine Data Fixtures generation,
Here is the message I'm getting when executing php app/console doctrine:fixtures:load in the console:
Fatal error: Class 'Doctrine\Bundle\DoctrineBundle\Command\DoctrineCommand' not found in C:\xampp\htdocs\blog-sf2\vendor\bundles\Doctrine\Bundle\FixturesBundle\Command\LoadDataFixturesDoctrineCommand.php on line 40
I am really stuck on it and I am running Windows 7, so can't really use deps file to pull dependencies from older versions (OR CAN I somehow??),
I've downloaded the newest versions of FixtureBundles and DoctrineFixtures.
Really appreciate any help on this one!
I think you need to read the installation documentation of this bundle for the 2.0 branch
You don't really "use the deps" file. The bin/vendors script uses it, and uses git. So what you need to do to "use the deps" is install git (and btw, install git-bash, you'll get a far better terminal).

Categories