PHP Composer can't find composer.json file for my project

Question

I have successfully installed Composer in the root directory (that was the default choice) on my Linux/Apache server using their installation guide. It's all been very simple so far, except for one php.ini tweak I've had to make (detect_unicode = Off) but now I'm stuck.

I'm trying to install Ratchet using Composer, with the use of this guide:

http://socketo.me/docs/install

It says I need to "create a file called composer.json in your project folder". So I created that file (with the contents they gave on their page) using the cPanel file manager, in my application's root directory. However, when I run Composer using:

php composer.phar install

PuTTy gives the following error message:

Composer could not find a composer.json file in /root
To initialize a project, please create a composer.json file as described in the http://getcomposer.org/ "Getting Started" section

But this doesn't seem to make sense, why would I place the JSON file in the server's root if the documentation says to place it in the project folder? What am I missing?

Answer 1

I just found on other topic that you can use :

php composer.phar --working-dir=/home/user/folder/ update

Answer 2

It looks like you're executing php composer.phar install in /root path.