How To Install PHP Composer on Ubuntu 18.04 & 16.04

The PHP Composer is a package management tool for PHP similar to NPM for Nodejs and bundle for Ruby. Using the composer tool we can define required libraries for our project and install it with the composer in the single command. We don’t need to search for each library to install.

This tutorial helps you to install and configure PHP composer on Ubuntu 19.10, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS systems.

1. Prerequsities

• Shell access to a running Ubuntu system with sudo privilege.
• PHP must be installed and configured, version 5.3 or higher.

2. Install Composer on Ubuntu

To install PHP composer on an Ubuntu system. We just need to download the composer executable and put it under bin directory.

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php

Now use the following commands to make composer available globally for all users in your system, which can be used for all PHP applications on that system.

sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/composer

After installation of the composer on your system. Type composer at the command prompt. This will provide you composer version details along with options available with composer command.

composer 

Output:

   ______
  / ____/___  ____ ___  ____  ____  ________  _____
 / /   / __ \/ __ `__ \/ __ \/ __ \/ ___/ _ \/ ___/
/ /___/ /_/ / / / / / / /_/ / /_/ (__  )  __/ /
\____/\____/_/ /_/ /_/ .___/\____/____/\___/_/
                    /_/
Composer version 1.9.3 2020-02-04 12:58:49

Usage:
  command [options] [arguments]

Options:
  -h, --help                     Display this help message
  -q, --quiet                    Do not output any message
  -V, --version                  Display this application version
      --ansi                     Force ANSI output
      --no-ansi                  Disable ANSI output
  -n, --no-interaction           Do not ask any interactive question
      --profile                  Display timing and memory usage information
      --no-plugins               Whether to disable plugins.
  -d, --working-dir=WORKING-DIR  If specified, use the given directory as working directory.
      --no-cache                 Prevent use of the cache

3. Upgrade Composer

You can download the latest version of the composer by executing the same commands used for installation. The composer also has capabilities to update itself. Use the following command to update the composer itself.

sudo composer self-update