How to create composer library package that auto generates code when included

Question

Every time I create a new PHP project I basically use the same MVC folder structure that I adopted and like, I use the same base classes, interfaces, and the same PDO DAL implementation. When I'm creating a new project I copy&paste all the needed files to the new project in addition to few changes, like changes to namespaces (to match the new project name) etc.

I thought, why not creating a simple script to copy those files and folders, and make the additional changes. So now, when I create a new project I just run the script and the code is generated automatically, which is much nicer.

And then I thought, I want it to be even simpler. I don't want to save the code in my computer, I want to save it on Github, and since I use and love composer, I thought I will make the Github project a composer package. But when trying to implement it I realized that I can't make the new composer package auto generate the code that I want, or at least I don't know how to make it do that. I tried googling it with no success.

Does anyone knows how to achieve this?

Answer 1

I don't see any need to generate code here. Simply add your skeleton files to your Git repository and use Composer's create-project feature. See the third point:

You can use Composer to create new projects from an existing package. This is the equivalent of doing a git clone/svn checkout followed by a composer install of the vendors.

There are several applications for this:

1. You can deploy application packages.
2. You can check out any package and start developing on patches for example.
3. Projects with multiple developers can use this feature to bootstrap the initial application for development.

An example of a major PHP project that supports this approach is Laravel. From its installation instructions:

Via Composer

The Laravel framework utilizes Composer for installation and dependency management. If you haven't already, start by installing Composer.

Now you can install Laravel by issuing the following command from your terminal:

composer create-project laravel/laravel your-project-name --prefer-dist

This command will download and install a fresh copy of Laravel in a new your-project-name folder within your current directory.

If you prefer, you can alternatively download a copy of the Laravel repository from Github manually. Next run the composer install command in the root of your manually created project directory. This command will download and install the framework's dependencies.

Edit:

To have a script run after composer create-project completes you should be able to use a Composer script:

A script, in Composer's terms, can either be a PHP callback (defined as a static method) or any command-line executable command. Scripts are useful for executing a package's custom code or package-specific commands during the Composer execution process.

You are probably looking for the post-create-project-cmd event:

occurs after the create-project command is executed

Depending on whether your script is a static PHP method or a shell executable, you should define it as follows (modified from Composer documentation):

{
    "scripts": {
        "post-create-project-cmd": "MyVendor\\MyClass::postUpdate"
    }
}

or

{
    "scripts": {
        "post-create-project-cmd": "my-shell-script arg1 arg2"
    }
}