picocms / composer-installer
A composer plugin responsible for installing plugins and themes for Pico, a stupidly simple, blazing fast, flat file CMS.
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Type:composer-installer
This package is auto-updated.
Last update: 2024-10-27 22:30:36 UTC
README
This is the repository of Pico's official Composer installer.
Pico is a stupidly simple, blazing fast, flat file CMS. See http://picocms.org/ for more info.
This Composer plugin is responsible for installing Pico plugins and themes using the Composer package manager (i.e. by running composer install
on the command line). It assumes responsibility for packages that identify as { "type": "pico-plugin" }
and { "type": "pico-theme" }
in their composer.json
and instructs Composer to install these packages to Pico's plugins/
and themes/
folder respectively.
The installer furthermore creates a vendor/pico-plugin.php
with a list of all installed Pico plugins and the corresponding PHP classes (requires the post-autoload-dump
event, see "Install" section below). This file is used by Pico 2.0+ to load such plugins at runtime and even allows you to completely disable filesystem-based loading of plugins. Just make sure to add a proper autoload section to your composer.json
- otherwise Pico won't find your plugin's PHP class.
The installer's behavior is fully configurable in both the plugin's and themes's composer.json
, and the root package's composer.json
(see the "Usage" section below).
Please refer to picocms/Pico
to get info about how to contribute or getting help.
Install
If you've used Pico's official composer starter project (picocms/pico-composer
), your website's composer.json
(the "root package") already depends on picocms/composer-installer
. If this isn't true, run the following to load it from Packagist.org:
$ composer require picocms/composer-installer:^1.0
The Composer plugin tries to automatically register itself for the post-autoload-dump
event. This is a prerequisite for the installer to create a vendor/pico-plugin.php
. If the installer was successful in doing so, you'll see the following three lines when running composer install
or composer update
:
Generating autoload files
> Pico\Composer\Installer\PluginInstaller::postAutoloadDump
Creating Pico plugins file
If you see just the first two lines and not the third one, please make sure that your website identifies itself as { "type": "project" }
in your root package's composer.json
and directly depends on picocms/composer-installer
. If you see the first line only, let us know by opening a new Issue on GitHub. To solve this issue, add the following to the root package's composer.json
:
{ "scripts": { "post-autoload-dump": [ "Pico\\Composer\\Installer\\PluginInstaller::postAutoloadDump" ] } }
Usage
Your plugins and themes themselves do not need to require picocms/composer-installer
. They only need to specify the type in their composer.json
:
{ "type": "pico-plugin" }
or
{ "type": "pico-theme" }
More about themes
The Pico theme installer will automatically determine the installation directory by converting the package name to StudlyCase and removing the -theme
suffix, if present. The result of this step is called "installer name". For example, the package pico-nyan-cat-theme
is installed to the themes/PicoNyanCat
directory. You can then use the theme by adding theme: PicoNyanCat
to Pico's config/config.yml
.
You can overrule this behavior by setting the installer-name
extra in your theme's composer.json
. For example, Pico's official default theme (picocms/pico-theme
) has the following lines in its composer.json
, instructing the installer to install it to the themes/default
directory:
{ "extra": { "installer-name": "default" } }
More about plugins
The Pico plugin installer will automatically determine the installation directory by converting the package name to StudlyCase and removing the -plugin
suffix, if present. The result of this step is called "installer name". The installer name is later used by Pico to load the plugin's PHP class. For example, the package pico-nyan-cat-plugin
is installed to the plugins/PicoNyanCat
directory and Pico later uses the PicoNyanCat
PHP class to load the plugin.
For the installer to work properly ensure that your plugin's composer.json
has a proper autoload section, allowing Pico to later find the PicoNyanCat
PHP class:
{ "autoload": { "classmap": [ "PicoNyanCat.php" ] } }
You can change the installation directory by setting the installer-name
extra in your plugin's composer.json
. By overruling the installer name, you also change the PHP class Pico uses to load the plugin. For example, if your package is called my-vendor/my-pico-plugin
, the installer would install it to the plugins/MyPico
directory. If you don't want the -plugin
suffix to be removed, add the following lines to your plugin's composer.json
:
{ "extra": { "installer-name": "MyPicoPlugin" } }
The installer will now install your plugin to the plugins/MyPicoPlugin
directory and Pico loads the plugin using the MyPicoPlugin
PHP class.
Advanced plugin setups
If you're not an absolute Pico expert, don't read further! Even if it sounds pretty convenient, the following is only relevant in very advanced setups:
The Pico plugin installer consists of two parts: First, it determines the installer name to decide to which directory the plugin is installed to. Second, it creates a vendor/pico-plugin.php
with a list of all installed plugins and the corresponding PHP classes. If this file is present, it is used by Pico 2.0+ to load these plugins. Pico naturally also ensures that these plugins aren't loaded as local plugin a second time. However, the vendor/pico-plugin.php
is only created if the post-autoload-dump
event is used (what is usually the case).
If the post-autoload-dump
event is not used, the installer won't create a vendor/pico-plugin.php
and Pico loads the plugin the filesystem-based way: It looks at the directory name, tries to include a .php
file of the same name in this directory and uses the same name as PHP class. In other words: If there's a plugins/PicoNyanCat
directory, Pico includes the plugins/PicoNyanCat/PicoNyanCat.php
file and loads the plugin using the PicoNyanCat
PHP class. If this doesn't work, Pico irrecoverably bails out.
As you've probably noticed already, this might go horribly wrong. So, be careful!
If you want to overwrite the PHP classes Pico uses to load the plugin, or if you want to load multiple plugins at a time, use the pico-plugin
extra in your plugin's composer.json
. The composer.json
of a plugin collection might look like the following:
{ "extra": { "installer-name": "MyPluginCollection", "pico-plugin": [ "MyVendor\\MyPluginCollection\\MyFirstPlugin", "MyVendor\\MyPluginCollection\\MySecondPlugin" ] } }
Please note that you must not use this feature if you want to share your plugin with others!
Using the root package's composer.json
All composer.json
tweaks explained above can also be used in the root package's composer.json
. The root package's composer.json
even takes precedence over the plugin's or theme's composer.json
, allowing you to overwrite the installer's behavior specifically for your website!
If you e.g. want to install the Pico theme some-vendor/nyan-cat-theme
to the themes/TacNayn
directory instead of themes/NyanCat
, add the following to the root package's composer.json
:
{ "extra": { "installer-name": { "some-vendor/nyan-cat-theme": "TacNayn" } } }
Besides using the exact package name, you can also use the vendor:
(e.g. vendor:some-vendor
) and name:
(e.g. name:nyan-cat-theme
) prefixes to match a plugin or theme package's name.
Naturally this isn't limited to themes, this works for plugins, too. However, be very careful, by changing a plugin's installer name, you (usually) also change the PHP class Pico uses to load the plugin. This will likely break your installation! See the "Advanced plugin setups" section above for more info. Simply put, don't use this for plugins!
Sometimes your themes directory isn't called themes/
, but rather something else, like public/
. You can change the path to both the themes/
and plugins/
directory using the pico-theme-dir
resp. pico-plugin-dir
extra. Simply add the following to your root package's composer.json
:
{ "extra": { "pico-theme-dir": "public/", "pico-plugin-dir": "/some/absolute/path/" } }
What about websites not using Composer?
Don't worry, Pico neither requires you to use Composer, nor picocms/composer-installer
.
If your plugin consists of the PicoNyanCat
PHP class, create a PicoNyanCat.php
and write its class definition into this file. If you then want to use that plugin, simply move the PicoNyanCat.php
to your plugins/
directory. If your plugin consists of multiple files (what is recommended, like a README.md
or LICENSE
file), create a plugins/PicoNyanCat/
folder and move the PicoNyanCat.php
into that folder (so that you get plugins/PicoNyanCat/PicoNyanCat.php
).
If you want to share your plugin, simply share said plugins/PicoNyanCat/
folder and instruct your users to copy it to their plugins/
directory. That's it!
One might legitimately ask why he should use Composer and picocms/composer-installer
in the first place. The answer's simple: Because Composer makes it even easier for the user - especially with more than two or three plugins! See Pico's official composer starter project (picocms/pico-composer
) for a more complete reasoning.