Downloading and installing packages

One of the best features of Laravel is how modular it is. Most of the framework is built using libraries, or packages, that are well tested and widely used in other projects. By using Composer for dependency management, we can easily include other packages and seamlessly integrate them into our Laravel app.

For this recipe, we'll be installing two popular packages into our app: Jeffrey Way's Laravel 4 Generators and the Imagine image processing packages.

Getting ready

For this recipe, we need a standard installation of Laravel using Composer.

How to do it...

For this recipe, we will follow these steps:

1. Go to https://packagist.org/.

2. In the search box, search for way generator as shown in the following screenshot:

   

3. Click on the link for way/generators:

   

4. View the details at https://packagist.org/packages/way/generators and take notice of the require line to get the package's version. For our purposes, we'll use "way/generators": "1.0.*".

5. In our application's root directory...