WordPress plugin Demo Composer Autoload Third-party Library

Composer is a Dependency Manager for PHP. https://getcomposer.org/

I've heard lots of good things about using Composer and the Autoload functionality that comes with it. This is a base example case of using Composer to load a third-party library Composer and the Composer Autoloader.

The over-all idea is rather than checking in the third-party libraries as part of your development repository, you instead list them in composer.json and then you can load them locally.

Why use Composer and/or the Autoloader

The goal is to automate the installation, usage, and upgrade of third-party libraries as much as possible within the plugin.

Clarification/Warning

When distributing your plugin for use (on http://wordpress.org/plugins/ for example), it is NOT acceptable to exclude the third-party libraries. Defining third-party libraries exclusively in composer.json is great for development and developers, but doesn't work for end users.

How to Use this Plugin

Clone this repo to your Plugins Directory

Install Composer (if you haven't already)

Copy and pasting the following on your command line, should install it

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php;mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

More information at http://salferrarello.com/composer-wordpress-plugins/

Install the Third-Party Libraries to the Plugin

You can do this by running

composer install -vvv

Afterwards, you'll see a new directory called /vendors, which contains the third-party library.

Author

@salcode