# Setting up and using plugins ## Synopsis You may wish to alter or expand Composer's functionality with your own. For example if your environment poses special requirements on the behaviour of Composer which do not apply to the majority of its users or if you wish to accomplish something with composer in a way that is not desired by most users. In these cases you could consider creating a plugin to handle your specific logic. ## Creating a Plugin A plugin is a regular Composer package which ships its code as part of the package and may also depend on further packages. ### Plugin Package The package file is the same as any other package file but with the following requirements: 1. The [type][1] attribute must be `composer-plugin`. 2. The [extra][2] attribute must contain an element `class` defining the class name of the plugin (including namespace). If a package contains multiple plugins, this can be array of class names. 3. You must require the special package called `composer-plugin-api` to define which Plugin API versions your plugin is compatible with. The required version of the `composer-plugin-api` follows the same [rules][7] as a normal package's, except for the `1.0`, `1.0.0` and `1.0.0.0` _exact_ values. In only these three cases, Composer will assume your plugin actually meant `^1.0` instead. This was introduced to maintain BC with the old style of declaring the Plugin API version. In other words, `"require": { "composer-plugin-api": "1.0.0" }` means `"require": { "composer-plugin-api": "^1.0" }`. The current composer plugin API version is 1.0.0. An example of a valid plugin `composer.json` file (with the autoloading part omitted): ```json { "name": "my/plugin-package", "type": "composer-plugin", "require": { "composer-plugin-api": "~1.0" }, "extra": { "class": "My\\Plugin" } } ``` ### Plugin Class Every plugin has to supply a class which implements the [`Composer\Plugin\PluginInterface`][3]. The `activate()` method of the plugin is called after the plugin is loaded and receives an instance of [`Composer\Composer`][4] as well as an instance of [`Composer\IO\IOInterface`][5]. Using these two objects all configuration can be read and all internal objects and state can be manipulated as desired. Example: ```php getInstallationManager()->addInstaller($installer); } } ``` ## Event Handler Furthermore plugins may implement the [`Composer\EventDispatcher\EventSubscriberInterface`][6] in order to have its event handlers automatically registered with the `EventDispatcher` when the plugin is loaded. Plugin can subscribe to any of the available [script events](scripts.md#event-names). Example: ```php composer = $composer; $this->io = $io; } public static function getSubscribedEvents() { return array( PluginEvents::PRE_FILE_DOWNLOAD => array( array('onPreFileDownload', 0) ), ); } public function onPreFileDownload(PreFileDownloadEvent $event) { $protocol = parse_url($event->getProcessedUrl(), PHP_URL_SCHEME); if ($protocol === 's3') { $awsClient = new AwsClient($this->io, $this->composer->getConfig()); $s3RemoteFilesystem = new S3RemoteFilesystem($this->io, $event->getRemoteFilesystem()->getOptions(), $awsClient); $event->setRemoteFilesystem($s3RemoteFilesystem); } } } ``` ## Using Plugins Plugin packages are automatically loaded as soon as they are installed and will be loaded when composer starts up if they are found in the current project's list of installed packages. Additionally all plugin packages installed in the `COMPOSER_HOME` directory using the composer global command are loaded before local project plugins are loaded. > You may pass the `--no-plugins` option to composer commands to disable all > installed plugins. This may be particularly helpful if any of the plugins > causes errors and you wish to update or uninstall it. [1]: ../04-schema.md#type [2]: ../04-schema.md#extra [3]: https://github.com/composer/composer/blob/master/src/Composer/Plugin/PluginInterface.php [4]: https://github.com/composer/composer/blob/master/src/Composer/Composer.php [5]: https://github.com/composer/composer/blob/master/src/Composer/IO/IOInterface.php [6]: https://github.com/composer/composer/blob/master/src/Composer/EventDispatcher/EventSubscriberInterface.php [7]: ../01-basic-usage.md#package-versions