Foxy is a Composer plugin to automate the validation, installation, updating and removing of PHP libraries asset dependencies (javaScript, stylesheets, etc.) defined in the NPM package.json file of the project and PHP libraries during the execution of Composer. It handles restoring the project state in case NPM or Yarn or pnpm terminates with an error. All features and tools are available: Npmrc, Yarnrc, Webpack, Gulp, Grunt, Babel, TypeScript, Scss/Sass, Less, etc.

It is certain that each language has its own dependency management system, and that it is highly recommended to use each package manager. NPM, Yarn or pnpm works very well when the asset dependencies are managed only in the PHP project, but when you create PHP libraries that using assets, there is no way to automatically add asset dependencies, and most importantly, no validation of versions can be done automatically. You must tell the developers the list of asset dependencies that using by your PHP library, and you must ask him to add manually the asset dependencies to its asset manager of his project.

However, another solution exist - what many projects propose - you must add the assets in the folder of the PHP library (like /assets, /Resources/public). Of course, with this method, the code is duplicated, it pollutes the source code of the PHP library, no version management/validation is possible, and it is even less possible, to use all tools such as Babel, Scss, Less, etc ...

Foxy focuses solely on automation of the validation, addition, updating and deleting of the dependencies in the definition file of the asset package, while restoring the project state, as well as PHP dependencies if NPM, Yarn or pnpm terminates with an error.

Foxy retrieves the list of all Composer dependencies to inject the asset dependencies in the file package.json, and leaves the execution of the analysis, validation and downloading of the libraries to NPM, Yarn or pnpm. Therefore, no VCS Repository of Composer is used for analyzing the asset dependencies, and you keep the performance of native package manager used.

Foxy creates mock packages of the PHP libraries containing only the asset dependencies definition file in a local directory, and associates these packages in the asset dependencies definition file of the project. Given that Foxy does not manipulate any asset dependencies, and let alone the version constraints, this allows NPM, Yarn or pnpm to solve the asset dependencies without any intermediary. Moreover, the entire validation with the lock file and installation process is left to NPM, Yarn or pnpm.

Foxy restores the Composer lock file with all its PHP dependencies, as well as the asset dependencies definition file, in the previous state if NPM, Yarn or pnpm ends with an error.

• Compatible with Symfony Webpack Encore and Laravel Mix
• Works with Node.js and NPM, Yarn or pnpm
• Works with the asset dependencies defined in the package.json file for projects and PHP libraries
• Works with the installation in the dependencies of the project or libraries (not in global mode)
• Works with public or private repositories
• Works with all features of Composer, NPM, Yarn and pnpm
• Retains the native performance of Composer, NPM, Yarn and pnpm
• Restores previous versions of PHP dependencies and the lock file if NPM, Yarn or pnpm terminates with an error
• Validates the NPM, Yarn or pnpm version with a version range
• Configuration of the plugin per project, globally or with the environment variables:
  • Enable/disable the plugin
  • Choose the asset manager: NPM, Yarn or pnpm (npm is used by default)
  • Lock the version of the asset manager with the Composer version range
  • Define the custom path of binary of the asset manager
  • Enable/disable the fallback for the asset package file of the project
  • Enable/disable the fallback for the Composer lock file and its dependencies
  • Enable/disable the running of asset manager to keep only the manipulation of the asset package file
  • Override the install command options for the asset manager
  • Override the update command options for the asset manager
  • Define the custom path of the mock package of PHP library
  • Enable/disable manually the asset packages for the PHP libraries
• Works with the Composer commands:
  • install
  • update
  • require
  • remove

• Guide
• FAQs
• Release Notes

Installation instructions are located in the guide.

Foxy is released under the MIT license. See the complete license in:

LICENSE

Foxy is a François Pluchino initiative. See also the list of contributors.

Issues and feature requests are tracked in the Github issue tracker.

Thanks to Tobias Munk to have suggesting this name