[[installation]]
== Installation

Elasticsearch-php only has three requirements that you need to pay attention:

* PHP 7.1.0 or higher
* http://getcomposer.org[Composer]
* http://php.net/manual/en/book.curl.php[ext-curl]: the Libcurl extension for 
  PHP (see note below)
* Native JSON Extensions (`ext-json`) 1.3.7 or higher

The rest of the dependencies are automatically downloaded and installed by 
Composer. Composer is a package and dependency manager for PHP and makes it easy 
to install Elasticsearch-php.

[NOTE]
.Libcurl can be replaced
====
The default HTTP handlers that ship with Elasticsearch-php require the PHP 
libcurl extension, but it is not technically required for the client to operate. 
If you have a host that does not have libcurl installed, you can use an 
alternate HTTP handler based on PHP streams. Performance _will_ suffer, as the 
libcurl extension is much faster.
====

[discrete]
=== Version Matrix

You need to match your version of {es} to the appropriate version of this 
library.

The master branch will always track {es} master, but it is not recommended to 
use `dev-master` in your production code.

[width="40%",options="header",frame="topbot"]
|============================
|Elasticsearch Version | Elasticsearch-PHP Branch
| >= 7.0, < 8.0        | `7.0`
| >= 6.6, <= 6.7       | `6.7.x`
| >= 6.0, <= 6.5       | `6.5.c`
| >= 5.0, < 6.0        | `5.0`
| >= 1.0, < 5.0        | `1.0`, `2.0`
| <= 0.90.*            | `0.4`
|============================


[discrete]
=== Composer Installation

* Include elasticsearch-php in your `composer.json` file.  If you are starting a 
  new project, paste the following JSON snippet into a new file called 
  `composer.json`. If you have an existing project, include this requirement 
  under the rest of requirements already present:
+
[source,json]
--------------------------
{
    "require": {
        "elasticsearch/elasticsearch": "~7.0"
    }
}
--------------------------

* Install the client with Composer.  The first command downloads the 
  `composer.phar` PHP package, the second command invokes the installation. 
  Composer automatically downloads any dependencies, store them in a /vendor/ 
  directory and build an autoloader:
+
[source,shell]
--------------------------
curl -s http://getcomposer.org/installer | php
php composer.phar install
--------------------------
+
More information about 
http://getcomposer.org/[Composer can be found at their website].

* Include the generated autoloader in your main project. If your project is 
  already based on Composer, the autoloader is likely already included somewhere 
  and you don't need to add it again. Finally, instantiate a new client:
+
[source,php]
--------------------------
require 'vendor/autoload.php';

$client = Elasticsearch\ClientBuilder::create()->build();
--------------------------
+
Client instantiation is performed with a static helper function `create()`. This 
creates a ClientBuilder object, which helps you to set custom configurations. 
When you are done configuring, call the `build()` method to generate a `Client` 
object. For further info, consult the <<configuration>> section.