[FIXED] Adding composer into Codeigniter

Issue

I am using Codeigniter since a year and I also started learning Laravel recently and I noticed that having a composer in your framework really helps you in a many ways.

I notice that the Codeigniter 3 has this option in config.php file to add a composer in it.

$config['composer_autoload'] = TRUE;

so I am thinking to add a composer in my CI.

Is it best practice to add a Composer in CI?

What should be the directory structure for that and is it work smoothly with the CI?

Solution

This is how I implemented composer in CodeIgniter 3.It is very easy. You have to install composer on your machine and I think you have it because you use laravel.

• First copy and paste composer.json file in the project folder to application folder
• Secound in the config.php file $config['composer_autoload'] = TRUE;

Now you have composer in your project. I will saw you an example like how to install mpdf using composer

1. Open cmd and direct to application folder
2. Inside application directory Type composer require mpdf/mpdf

Now a vendor folder will be created inside application folder and inside vendor folder you can see all your packages downloaded by composer.

Now since you autoloaded composer now you can just use the code given by mpdf official manual like

function m_pdf()
{ 
    $mpdf = new mPDF();

    // Write some HTML code:
    $mpdf->WriteHTML('Hello World');

    // Output a PDF file directly to the browser
    $mpdf->Output();
}

You can install any packages in https://packagist.org/ like mpdf very simply like this. Remember you don't need to type require_once APPPATH.'/vendor/mpdf/mpdf/mpdf.php'; since you already autoloader composer. If not prefer to autoload composer you must type require_once APPPATH.'/vendor/mpdf/mpdf/mpdf.php' at the beginning of each controllers where you use the mpdf vendor libraries.

Answered By - Geordy James