codebright

The Primers 22
1 "suggest": {
2 "xmen/gambit": "1.0.0"
3 }
Your package might have a number of extra packages that enhance its functionality, but aren’t strictly
required. Why not add them to the suggest section? Composer will mention any packages in this
section as suggestions to install when running the Composer install command.
Well that’s all I have on dependencies. Let’s take a look at the next piece of Composer magic.
Autoloading!
Auto Loading
By now we have the knowledge to enable Composer to retrieve our package dependencies for us,
but how do we go about using them? We could require() the source files ourselves within PHP,
but that requires knowing exactly where they live.
Ain’t nobody got time for dat. Composer will handle this for us. If we tell Composer where our
classes are located, and what method can be used to load them then it will generate its own autoload,
which can be used by your application to load class definitions.
Actions speak louder than words, so let’s dive right in with an example.
1 "autoload": {
2
3 }
This is the section in which all of our autoloading configurations will be contained. Simple, right?
Great! No sock puppetry for you.
Let’s have a look at the simplest of loading mechanisms, the files method.
1 "autoload": {
2 "files": [
3 "path/to/my/firstfile.php",
4 "path/to/my/secondfile.php"
5 ]
6 }
The files loading mechanism provides an array of files which will be loaded when the Composer
autoloader component is loaded within your application. The file paths are considered relative to
your project’s root folder. This loading method is effective, but not very convenient. You won’t
want to add every single file manually for a large project. Let’s take a look at some better methods
of loading larger amounts of files.