Using PHP Packages without Composer

Question

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?

Answer 1

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:

1. Create a temporary working directory:

   $ mkdir -p ~/.tmp && cd ~/.tmp
   

2. Clone your package:

   $ git clone <package>
   

3. 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
   

4. Remove .git directory.

5. Create the zip/tar archive from ~/.tmp/<package>

6. 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.

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¹⁾ Regarding --optimize-autoloader, please read this answer from Sven, which explains why in some cases doesn't help your application to become faster.

Answer 2

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.