How to use a vendor file (installed via Composer) in a Cake-PHP-View?

Question

I've got a problem here, which I have a feeling got a simple and clean solution which I haven't found yet... My Cake-PHP-Application looks like this:

• Projectfolder
  • app
  • vendors
  • composer.json

Cake-PHP and the external file I want to use are installed inside the vendors-folder. In vendors I have a package for twitter bootstrap, which has a css- and a js-file I want to include inside my view, but it ain't accessable, since those file don't remain inside the webroot-Folder of my Cake-PHP project. Now my question is - How do I make those both files accessable inside my Cake-PHP project, WITHOUT copying them to the webroot-folder? Using symlinks looks a bit like a dirty hack to me... There has to be a clean solution, since otherwise using Cake-PHP with Composer would make no sence. My composer.json looks like this:

{
"name": "MyProject",
"version": "0.0.0",
"require": {
    "php": ">=5.5.11",
    "cakephp/cakephp": "2.6.3",
    "composer/installers": "*",
    "twbs/bootstrap": "3.3.4",
    "components/jquery": "2.1.3"
},
"extra" : {
  "installer-paths":{
      "plugins/{$name}":["type:cakephp-plugin"],
      "app/webroot/bootstrap":["twbs/bootstrap"]
  }
},
"config": {
    "vendor-dir": "vendors"
}

Btw: composer ignores the given installpath for bootstrap, since the package has no type...

Answer 1

Using tws/bootstrap will require an additional step for the installation of these assets. This is often done by symlinking or copying.

For instance, when adding Bootstrap to Symfony2 you would require

 "require" : {
     "mopa/bootstrap-bundle": "dev-master",
     "twbs/bootstrap": "dev-master",
   },
    "scripts": {
        "post-install-cmd": [
            /* sensio commands **/
            "Mopa\\Bundle\\BootstrapBundle\\Composer\\ScriptHandler::postInstallSymlinkTwitterBootstrap"
        ],
        "post-update-cmd": [
            /* sensio commands **/
            "Mopa\\Bundle\\BootstrapBundle\\Composer\\ScriptHandler::postInstallSymlinkTwitterBootstrap"
        ]
    },

One package is the asset itselfs, the other packages provides the integration and "postInstall" handler for the asset.

For Cake you would have to find the package doing the installation job for tws/boostrap - maybe such a package is around in the Cake community.

But i would suggest using something easier, which works out of the box:

{
    "require": {
        "slywalker/boost_cake": "*"
    }
}

And then use enable CakePlugin::load('BoostCake'); and add the helpers you need.

As @ndm pointed out: you could also decide to work with Composer "bridges" to other asset managers (indirect). One of them is https://github.com/francoispluchino/composer-asset-plugin

Or you could work with these asset managers, like bower, npm directly.