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Composer is a tool known in the PHP ecosystem to manage the dependencies of a project. It has been originally added in PrestaShop 1.7 to handle the inclusion of the Symfony framework and the native modules. As composer is compatible with PHP 5.3, it can be used in a module even compatible with previous major versions of PrestaShop.
From a single configuration file, a module will benefit of these features:
References:
If Composer is not installed in you environment, this can be done via their website getcomposer.org. We recommend to store the binary in a folder available in your system or user path, to avoid looking for it at each command.
You need setup composer in your module before create the services.
Create the file <module name>/composer.json and paste:
{
"name": "<your name>/<module name>",
"description": "<module description>",
"authors": [
{
"name": "<your name>",
"email": "<your email>"
}
],
"require": {
"php": ">=5.6.0"
},
"autoload": {
"psr-4": {
"<YourNamespace>\\": "src/"
},
"classmap": [
"<file>.php",
"classes/"
],
"exclude-from-classmap": []
},
"config": {
"preferred-install": "dist",
"prepend-autoloader": false
},
"type": "prestashop-module",
"author": "<???>",
"license": "<???>"
}
To make a class automatically loaded in memory as soon as you reference it in your code,
you should add in the list autoload.classmap the file it is stored in.
The classes defined in a namespace can be detected if you ask Composer to scan a folder in autoload.psr-4.
In YourNamespace add your namespace. The convention for namespaces used by PrestaShop is
PrestaShop\\Module\\ModuleName as our base namespace, you can either follow this convention or adapt it to your
business YourCompany\\YourModuleName.
Then in console in your module root run command composer dump-autoload.
This will generate a vendor folder contain an autoload.php file which allows the use of your namespace or
the classes defined in the classmap.
You can also use composer to include some dependencies in your module, you can find more information about composer on Composer page.
Disable prepend-autoloader
It is required for you to disable the prepend autoloader feature. By default the module dependencies would be defined before the core ones, which would result in overriding them. If you want the PrestaShop core system to work correctly you must not override its dependencies. Which is why you need to always add in your composer.json file:
"config": {
"prepend-autoloader": false
}
Don’t forget to include your vendor folder in your release package
Composer is responsible for downloading your dependencies and creating the autoloader file that your module will need to work properly. Therefore, remember to run composer dump-autoload -o --no-dev before you create your package, and make sure you include the vendor directory in it.
Don’t include development dependencies in your release package
Development-only libraries like PHPUnit can pose a security threat in production environments. Make sure that these libraries are imported as “dev dependencies” (require-dev) so that they aren’t included when you create your release package. If in doubt, double-check that they aren’t in the vendor directory when creating your release package.