Difference Between composer.json And package.json

Often, the developers get confused between composer.json and package.json because they look similar but actually different in working and contain different data.

So in this tutorial, we will learn the difference between the composer.json and package.json file. Most of the users found these files in the Laravel root directory. The package.json file is usually found in the JavaScript Framework project like AngularJs, VueJs, React, NodeJs, etc.

Let’s see how composer.json and package.json is differ from each other.

Difference Between composer.json And package.json

01 composer.json

Composer is a package management tool for PHP. So composer.json manages the PHP dependencies
For Example, The command composer require fzaninotto/faker will open and write to the composer.json file and download all the dependencies
Composer resolves all dependencies listed in your composer.json file and downloads the latest version of their files into the vendor directory in your project
When Composer has finished installing, it also generates the composer.lock file and write all the package information with the version in this file.

Example Of composer.json

{
    "repositories": [
        {
            "type": "composer",
            "url": "http://packages.example.com"
        },
        {
            "type": "composer",
            "url": "https://packages.example.com",
            "options": {
                "ssl": {
                    "verify_peer": "true"
                }
            }
        },
        {
            "type": "vcs",
            "url": "https://github.com/Seldaek/monolog"
        },
        {
            "type": "package",
            "package": {
                "name": "smarty/smarty",
                "version": "3.1.7",
                "dist": {
                    "url": "https://www.smarty.net/files/Smarty-3.1.7.zip",
                    "type": "zip"
                },
                "source": {
                    "url": "https://smarty-php.googlecode.com/svn/",
                    "type": "svn",
                    "reference": "tags/Smarty_3_1_7/distribution/"
                }
            }
        }
    ]
}

02 package.json

package.json manages the Node dependencies
All npm packages contain a file, usually in the project root, called package.json – this file holds various metadata relevant to the project. This file is used to give information to npm that allows it to identify the project as well as handle the project’s dependencies.
For Example, The command npm install datatables.net will open and write to the package.json file and download all the dependencies
NPM installs all the dependencies to ./node_modules.

Example Of package.json

{
  "name" : "underscore",
  "description" : "JavaScript's functional programming helper library.",
  "homepage" : "http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/",
  "keywords" : ["util", "functional", "server", "client", "browser"],
  "author" : "Jeremy Ashkenas <jeremy@documentcloud.org>",
  "contributors" : [],
  "dependencies" : [],
  "repository" : {"type": "git", "url": "git://github.com/documentcloud/underscore.git"},
  "main" : "underscore.js",
  "version" : "1.1.6"
}

Additionally, read our guide:

That’s it from our end. We hope this article helped you to understand the difference between composer.json and package.json

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