composer.json file property name is required

Question

I am using composer for the first time so if I shouldn't be posting here I am very sorry.

I am following a youtube tutorial on the paypal api I have installed composer and created the json file the same as the example. composer.json is saved in the root folder for the website. the structure is below. composer diagnose composer.json: fail and property name is required.

{
"require": {
    "paypal/rest-api-php": "1.5.1"
}

}

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 13 '20 at 20:50

looks like your composer had much fresher version, check composer --version !

need to update composer.json with:

{
"name": "some/name",
"description": "Some description will be useful too!",

"require": {
    "paypal/rest-api-php": "1.5.1"
}
}

or install some old version, by exec 3lines

php -r "copy('https://getcomposer.org/installer', 'composer-setup.php');"
sudo php composer-setup.php --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer  --version=1.0.1
php -r "unlink('composer-setup.php');"

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 31 '15 at 22:10

The best way to start a project using Composer:

composer init

This will ask you some questions, some of them with sensible defaults that you can simply accept - others (like the name of your project) cannot be guessed.

The best way to install a package after that

composer require package/name

Optionally for development packages:

composer require --dev package/name

The composer command used here assumes you have downloaded "composer.phar" and renamed or symlinked it in a way that it can be called just by typing composer. Otherwise, replace that command with the one that works for you, like php composer.phar or composer.phar.

composer.json file property name is required

2 Answers2