How to Install and use PHP Composer on AlmaLinux 8

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP that allows you to download and install all the required PHP packages needed for your project. It is a command-line tool that installs all libraries and dependencies for your project from the packagist.org repository. It is used in modern PHP frameworks such as Laravel, Symfony, Drupal, and Magento 2.

In this post, we will show you how to install and use Composer on Alma Linux 8.

Prerequisites

A server running Alma Linux 8.
A root password is configured on your server.

Install Required Packages

Before installing Composer, you will need to install PHP dependencies required to install Composer. You can install all of them by running the following command:

dnf install php-cli php-json php-zip wget unzip -y

Once all the packages are installed, you can proceed to the next step.

Download Composer Installation Script

The simple and easiest way to install the Composer is to install it from the installer script. You can download it using the following command:

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"

This will download the composer-setup.php file to your current working directory.

Verify the Installation Script

After downloading the installer script, you will need to verify it whether it is corrupted or not. You can verify it using the following command:

HASH="$(wget -q -O - https://composer.github.io/installer.sig)"
php -r "if (hash_file('SHA384', 'composer-setup.php') === '$HASH') { echo 'Installer verified'; } else { echo 'Installer corrupt'; unlink('composer-setup.php'); } echo PHP_EOL;"

If everything is fine, you will get the following output:

Installer verified

Install Composer on Alma Linux 8

Finally, install the Composer to the /usr/loca/bin directory using the following command:

php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer

Output:

All settings correct for using Composer
Downloading...

Composer (version 2.2.4) successfully installed to: /usr/local/bin/composer
Use it: php /usr/local/bin/composer

You can now verify the installation using the following command:

composer -V

You should see the following output:

Composer version 2.2.4 2022-01-08 12:30:42

Working with Composer

In this section, we will show you how to use Composer in a PHP project.

First, create a project using the following command:

mkdir project

Next, navigate to the project directory and install the carbon package with the following command:

cd project
composer require nesbot/carbon

Output:

  - Downloading symfony/translation-contracts (v2.5.0)
  - Downloading symfony/polyfill-php80 (v1.24.0)
  - Downloading symfony/polyfill-mbstring (v1.24.0)
  - Downloading symfony/deprecation-contracts (v2.5.0)
  - Downloading symfony/translation (v5.4.2)
  - Downloading nesbot/carbon (2.55.2)
  - Installing symfony/translation-contracts (v2.5.0): Extracting archive
  - Installing symfony/polyfill-php80 (v1.24.0): Extracting archive
  - Installing symfony/polyfill-mbstring (v1.24.0): Extracting archive
  - Installing symfony/deprecation-contracts (v2.5.0): Extracting archive
  - Installing symfony/translation (v5.4.2): Extracting archive
  - Installing nesbot/carbon (2.55.2): Extracting archive
3 package suggestions were added by new dependencies, use `composer suggest` to see details.
Generating autoload files
6 packages you are using are looking for funding.
Use the `composer fund` command to find out more!

This will create a composer.json file and install carbon with all dependencies to the project directory.

You can list all files with the following command:

ls -l

You will get the following output:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    60 Jan  9 06:01 composer.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 18538 Jan  9 06:01 composer.lock
drwxr-xr-x 6 root root    82 Jan  9 06:01 vendor

Next, create a myapp.php file and add the following code:

nano myapp.php

Add the following code:

<?php

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use Carbon\Carbon;

printf("Now: %s", Carbon::now());

Save and close the file then run your application using the following command:

php myapp.php

You will get the following output:

Now: 2022-01-09 06:02:17

Conclusion

In this guide, we explained how to install Composer on Alma Linux 8. We also explained how to interact with Composer in your PHP project. I hope this will help you to speed up your PHP applications

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