Composer - autoload class on specific PHP version

Question

We are actually migrating our PHP project from PHP 5.3 to 7.2.

I recently migrate many libraries to Composer.

I have a problem to replace PHPExcel with PhpSpreadSheet which doesn't support PHP 5.3.

I keep PHPExcel in a separate folder for the moment and I use PHP_VERSION_ID to use either one or the other.

// early in the file to use another dependency
require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';
.
.
.
if (PHP_VERSION_ID > 50400) {
      $workbook = new PhpOffice\PhpSpreadsheet\Spreadsheet();
} else {
      require_once 'lib/PHPExcel/Classes/PHPExcel.php';
      $workbook = new PHPExcel();
}

For the moment, our code must keep running under PHP 5.3 and 7.2.

Is there a solution to tell Composer autoloader to not autoload PhpSpreadSheet under PHP 5.3?

Take it out of composer completely, require both classes manually until you have ported over to 7.2 and then add back to composer. — fire, Aug 08 '18 at 09:41
Does the autoload raise some error if the PhpSpreadsheet is loaded under 5.3? — AwesomeGuy, Aug 08 '18 at 09:42
it turns out that Spreadsheet does not work without Composer. Is there a solution to create a package with its dependencies ? — Rafik Haceb, Aug 08 '18 at 09:43
@Imaginaroom Yes one of the dependencies Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '.', expecting '&' or T_VARIABLE in vendor/markbaker/complex/classes/src/operations/add.php on line 18 — Rafik Haceb, Aug 08 '18 at 09:45
I think i'll take @fire suggestion. I'll try to create a PhpSpreadSheet package with all its dependencies in the lib folder and process autolaod manually. Thanks . — Rafik Haceb, Aug 08 '18 at 11:00

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 22 '18 at 20:04

1

Is there a solution to tell Composer autoloader to not autoload PhpSpreadSheet under PHP 5.3?

Composer's autoloader will not load any class as long you're not request it. So the simplest option to tell Composer to not loading specified class, is to not using it. :)

However migrating from PHP 5.3 to 7.2 is a big task, trying to make your app compatible with both these version may make it really hard. I suggest to treat this as two separate versions developed on different branches with different PHP version required. It should be easier to have two lines where one should care only about PHP 5.3 and second only about PHP 7.2, than hacking one line to be compatible with both PHP 5.3 and 7.2. PHP 5.3 was released in 2009 - its ~7 years older than PHP 7.2, and many things was changed at this time.

answered Aug 22 '18 at 20:04

rob006

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This is not completely correct, as a package may request to always execute code via `"autoload":{"files":"..."}` - so technically a package may always execute code even if not used. That files autoloader feature is built to import global functions, which still cannot be autoloaded. On the other hand, it is more likely that packages for old versions of PHP use this feature unconditionally - the modern polyfill packages e.g. from Symfony do everything they can to impact as few use cases as possible (zero). – Sven Aug 27 '18 at 20:57
1

@Sven `phpoffice/phpspreadsheet` does not use this feature, so although you're generally right, this is not the case you're talking about. – rob006 Aug 27 '18 at 22:29

Composer - autoload class on specific PHP version

1 Answers1