Composer is the most used package dependency manager in PHP ecosystem since a few years. It manages complex dependecies with an easy syntax, and you can easily search among all available packages in packagist.org, where you can publish your own too.
It was interesting to find a list of the most required packages. Some of them are part of a framework, while others are lonely gems. As a person that values professionalism, it should be a must to have some experience, or at least know, the most popular packages. Here I’m having a look at some of them.
The absolute #1 is PHPUnit. If you are programming in PHP and have never used it, go and get a position as consultant, please. The PHP unit testing framework has been a popular choice since years ago (I’ve even posted about it in 2008). A must you should know.
The list contains other testing related packages too. #4 Mockery is an object mocking package widely used. In my personal case, I use Prophecy for mocking, which comes with #21 phpspec, a test framework that can complement or substitute PHPUnit. In the list also appears #44 behat, a tool for making scenario-oriented BDD that is rising popularity.
Regarding complete frameworks, the list includes lots of Symfony framework packages. #3 symfony/framework-bundle, #5 symfony/symfony, #8 symfony/console, #10 symfony/yaml, etc. Some of them are core to symfony framework, while others are so independent that are widely used, even without using this framework. A clear example of that is yaml package, which (obviously) processes yaml files.
Of course not only Symfony appears in the list, but also other popular frameworks like: Laravel (#2 illuminate/support, #47 laravel/framework), Zend (#13 zendframework/zendframework), Yii (#17 yiisoft/yii2) and Silex (#22 silex/silex).
Apart from complete frameworks, the list comes with some other must-know packages. The DB-related Doctrine is the first to appear (#6 doctrine/orm, #31 doctrine/common, #38 doctrine/dbal). There are some code-quality related packages, like #7 PHP Coveralls, #11 PHP_CodeSniffer and #33 PHP Mess Detector. Finally some usual suspects, like #15 Guzzle (HTTP client), #19 Monolog (the standard way of logging, already included everywhere).
Finally, some packages in the list were a surprise to me, as I had no idea about them. For instance, #9 composer/installers (an multi-framework installer), #16 silverstripe/framework (a CMS) or #29 nette (another framework).
Definitively it’s a great collection of packages, and if you combine them with the ones from The League of Extraordinary Packages, you will get a great stuff to learn from: 1st, know about them; 2nd, try to use them; and 3rd, read their source code.