How can I remove a package from Laravel using PHP Composer?

Question

What is the correct way to remove a package from Laravel using PHP Composer?

So far I've tried:

1. Remove declaration from file composer.json (in the "require" section)
2. Remove any class aliases from file app.php
3. Remove any references to the package from my code :-)
4. Run composer update
5. Run composer dump-autoload

None of these options are working! What am I missing?

Answer 1

Composer 1.x and 2.x

Running the following command will remove the package from vendor (or wherever you install packages), composer.json and composer.lock. Change vendor/package appropriately.

composer remove vendor/package

Obviously you'll need to remove references to that package within your app.

I'm currently running the following version of Composer:

Composer version 1.0-dev (7b13507dd4d3b93578af7d83fbf8be0ca686f4b5) 2014-12-11 21:52:29

Documentation

https://getcomposer.org/doc/03-cli.md#remove

Updates

• 26/10/2020 - Updated answer to assert command works for v1.x and v2.x of Composer

Answer 2

I got it working... The steps to remove a package from Laravel are:

1. Remove the declaration from file composer.json (in the "require" section)
2. **Remove Service Provider from file config/app.php (reference in the "providers" array)
3. Remove any class aliases from file config/app.php
4. Remove any references to the package from your code :-)
5. Run composer update vendor/package-name. This will remove the package folder from the vendor folder and will rebuild the Composer autoloading map.
6. Manually delete the published files (read the comment by zwacky)

It will remove the package folder from the Vendor folder.

Answer 3

Run the following command:

composer remove Vendor/Package Name

That's all. There isn't any need to update Composer. The Vendor/Package Name is just a directory as installed before.

Answer 4

Normally composer remove used like this is enough:

composer remove vendor/package

But if a Composer package is removed and the "config" cache is not cleaned you cannot clean it. When you try like so

php artisan config:clear

you can get an error In ProviderRepository.php line 208:

Class 'Laracasts\Flash\FlashServiceProvider' not found

This is a dead end, unless you go deleting files:

rm bootstrap/cache/config.php

And this is Laravel 5.6 I'm talking about, not some kind of very old stuff.

It happens usually on automated deployment, when you copy files of a new release on top of old cache. Even if you cleared the cache before copying. You end up with an old cache and a new composer.json file.

Answer 5

You can remove any package just by typing the following command in the terminal, and just remove the providers and alias you provided at the time of installing the package, if any and update the composer,

composer remove vendor/your_package_name
composer update

Answer 6

Before removing a package from a composer.json declaration, please remove the cache:

php artisan cache:clear  
php artisan config:clear 

If you forget to remove the cache and you get a "class not found error" then please reinstall the package, clear the cache and remove again.

Answer 7

Simplest and easiest way

Syntax:

composer remove <package>

Example:

composer remove laravel/tinker

Answer 8

You can do any one of the below two methods:

1. Running the below command (most recommended way to remove your package without updating your other packages)

   $ composer remove vendor/package

2. Go to your composer.json file and then run command like below it will remove your package (but it will also update your other packages)

   $ composer update

Answer 9

If you are still getting the error after you are done with all the steps in the previous answers, go to your projects, Bootstrap → Cache → config.php. Remove the provider and aliases entries from the cached array manually.

Answer 10

Use:

composer remove vendor/package

This is an example:

Install or add a package

composer require firebear/importexportfree

Uninstall / remove

composer remove firebear/importexportfree

Finally after removing:

php -f bin/magento setup:upgrade

php bin/magento setup:static-content:deploy –f

php bin/magento indexer:reindex

php -f bin/magento cache:clean

Answer 11

You can remove any package by typing following command in terminal, and just remove the providers and alias you provided at the time of installing the package and update the composer

composer remove <package_name>
composer update

Answer 12

To remove a package using the composer command:

composer remove <package>

To install a package using the composer command:

composer require <package>

To install all packages which are mentioned in file composer.json:

composer install

To update packages:

composer update

I used these for a Laravel project.

Answer 13

In case the given answers still don't help you remove that, try this:

• Manually delete the line in require from composer.json

• Run composer update

Answer 14

Remove the package with

composer remove vendorname/packagename

You can check remove package from composer.json - documentation.

Or you can remove the package name from the composer.json file and run composer update from within your project directory.

Answer 15

We have come with a great solution. This solution is practically done in Laravel 6. If you want to remove any package from your Laravel Project then you can easily remove the package by following below steps:

Step 1: You must know the package name which you want to remove. If you don't know the complete package name then you can open your project folder and go to the composer.json file and check the name in the require array:

"require": {
        "php": "^7.2",
        "fideloper/proxy": "^4.0",
        "laravel/framework": "^6.2",
        "laravel/passport": "^8.3",
        "laravel/tinker": "^2.0"
    },

Suppose, here I am going to remove the "fideloper/proxy" package.

Step 2: Open a command prompt with your project root folder directory

Step 3: First of all, clear all cache by the following commands. Run the commands one by one.

php artisan cache:clear  
php artisan config:clear 

Step 4: Now write the following command to remove the package. Here you need to change your package name instead of my example package.

composer remove fideloper/proxy

Now, wait for a few seconds while your package is removed.

Answer 16

1. Remove the package folder from the vendor folder (manual delete)
2. Remove it from file composer.json and 'composer.lock' files (use Ctrl + F5 to search)
3. Remove it from file config/app.php and file bootstrap/cache/config.php files
4. Run these commands:

   composer remove **your-package-name**
   php artisan cache:clear
   php artisan config:clear
   

Answer 17

On Laravel 8.*, the following steps work for me:

1. Run command composer remove package-name on the terminal

2. Remove Provider and aliases from file Config/app.php

3. Remove the related file from the Config folder.

Remove it from your code where you used it.

Answer 18

To add the packages, the command is to be like:

composer require spatie/laravel-permission

To remove the packages, the command is to be like:

composer remove spatie/laravel-permission

Answer 19

There are quite a few steps here:

1. Go to file composer.json and look for the package and how it is written over there.

• for example

{ "require": { "twig/twig": "^3.0" } }

I wish to remove twig 3.0

2. Now open cmd and run composer remove vendor/your_package_name as composer remove twig/twig will remove the package.

3. As a final step, run composer update. This will surely give you a massage of nothing to install or update, but this is important in case your packages have inter-dependencies.