My way of doing this is to create a new folder in the /app
directory in the root of your Laravel 4 project. Then add this folder to the first array of the /app/start/global.php
file like so:
<?php
ClassLoader::addDirectories(array(
app_path().'/commands',
app_path().'/controllers',
app_path().'/models',
app_path().'/database/seeds',
app_path().'/classes', // This line is the one I've added.
));
As long as the folder structure within the new /app/classes
folder follows your namespacing convention. Laravel 4 will autoload all the classes/files within this folder. This way there's no need to dig into any composer files or run composer command.
Not sure if this is best practice but it certainly works.
If you created a simple file called /app/classes/Helpers/Helper.php
such as this:
<?php namespace Helpers;
class Helper {
public static function helloWorld()
{
return 'Hello World';
}
}
All you would need to do is call Helpers\Helper::helloWorld();
You could also alias this helper class in your /app/config/app.php
file. Just add something like this to the end of the aliases
array:
'Helper' => 'Helpers\Helper'