PHP Composer & Next Steps

Composer

Composer is PHP's dependency manager — the tool that installs libraries and wires up autoloading.

composer init                    # create composer.json
composer require guzzlehttp/guzzle
composer install                 # install from composer.lock
composer update                  # update to newer allowed versions
composer dump-autoload           # rebuild the autoloader

Then one line loads everything:

<?php
require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

use GuzzleHttp\Client;

$client = new Client();
$res = $client->get('https://api.example.com/books');
echo $res->getBody();

What to commit

• Commit composer.json and composer.lock.
• Ignore vendor/ — it's rebuilt with composer install.

The lock file pins exact versions so every machine and server installs the same code.

Where to go next

You now have the core language: types, control flow, functions, arrays, OOP, error handling, and safe database access. Sensible next steps:

A framework. Laravel is the most popular choice in Nepal and has excellent documentation; Symfony is more explicit and modular. Both give you routing, templating, migrations, validation, and authentication so you stop rewriting them.

PSR standards. PSR-1/PSR-12 (coding style) and PSR-4 (autoloading) are what the whole ecosystem follows. Run php-cs-fixer or phpcs to apply them automatically.

Testing. PHPUnit or Pest. Even a handful of tests around your pricing and validation logic pays for itself quickly.

Static analysis. PHPStan or Psalm read your code and find bugs without running it. Start at a low level and raise it gradually — it is the fastest way to improve an existing codebase.

Modern PHP. If you learned PHP years ago, revisit it: typed properties, constructor promotion, enums, match, named arguments, readonly, and fibers have changed the language substantially.

A short checklist for every project

• declare(strict_types=1); at the top of every file.
• Prepared statements for every query.
• htmlspecialchars() on every output.
• password_hash() for every password.
• Errors logged, never displayed in production.
• Secrets in environment variables, not in git.

Get those six right and you are ahead of a large share of PHP code running in production today.