Using Composer to manage WordPress dependencies
Package managers help managing dependencies in a project, and have become indispensable tools in modern web development. Mature languages have their own package managers, and PHP is no exception with Composer.
Developers complain about how WordPress lags behind in this regard – with a lack of an official way of working with Composer. But what WordPress may lack in features – it makes up for in a super smart community.
Tools like Bedrock by Roots allow us to architect our sites and use any public WordPress plugin in the WordPress plugin repository using WPackagist.
However, support for Composer for “Pro” or paid plugins is still in its early days. Plugins like Yoast already support Composer, but everyone seems to have their own implementation.
To solve this problem, I have come up with a solution which works with the following plugins: https://packagist.org/packages/junaidbhura/composer-wp-pro-plugins
This Composer plugin allows you to add license keys for the following plugins in your .env file or environment variable within your CI environment:
- Advanced Custom Fields Pro
- Polylang Pro
- WP All Import Pro (and all add-ons)
- WP All Export Pro (and all add-ons)
- Gravity Forms
So no more committing plugin files within your repository! ?