Composer Cheat Sheet

Composer is a tool for dependency management in PHP. It allows you to declare the libraries your project depends on and it will manage (install/update) them for you. Composer is not a package manager in the traditional sense.

All composer commands you install may need to use php composer.phar in the composer installation folder instead of the regular composer.

Package Management

Command	Description
composer install	Install everything in composer.json
—	—
composer install laravel	Install a specific package
composer install laravel --dry-run	Simulate the installation and show what will happen
composer install laravel --no-scripts	Skip scripts defined in the composer.json file

Update

Command	Description
composer update	Update all packages
—	—
composer update laravel	Update a specific package
composer update vendor/*	Update all packages under a specific vendor folder
composer update --lock	Only update the lock file hash without updating any package

Dependencies

Command	Description
composer require laravel	Add a new package to composer.json and install it
—	—
composer require laravel --dev	Add a new package to require-dev and install it

Removal

Command	Description
composer remove laravel	Remove a package from composer.json and uninstall it