Extending Bolt / Using Composer Packages

By default, after installing Bolt you will get two composer files: composer.json and composer.lock. Those files are there to manage the dependencies of your project. Dependencies are third-party libraries that your code needs for it to execute correctly.

For example, in the composer.json file in your project, you'll see something like this:

"require": {
  "php": ">=7.2.9 || ^8.0",
  "bolt/core": "^5.0"
  "bolt/assets": "^5.0",
}

As the key of each dependency in require you'll find the name of the dependency, like php and, yes, bolt/core. The value specifies the version constraints, i.e. the versions of the third-party packages that your code is compatible with. ^5.0 means any version that is 5.0 or higher, but lower than 6.0.

Managing dependencies¶

You can install packages using composer require, for example:

composer require bolt/forms

To remove:

composer remove bolt/forms

To update a specific package

composer update bolt/forms

To update all packages

composer update

The above commands will update both composer.json and composer.lock. Simply put, composer.json keeps the configuration and version constraints of your project. composer.lock keeps the exact versions of all packages that you got with the most recent update command.

For more details, check semantic versioning and the Packagist repository.