Composer needs a proxy to install laravel apparently, where do I get that? can I set it up myself using apache? - apache

Question

I was trying to get started with Laravel just last night, so I tried to install it with composer but it wouldn't go through and kept sayin The "https://packagist.org/packages.json" file could not be downloaded: SSL operation failed with code 1. , so I looked around and found out that you need to tell composer to use a proxy.(q1 q2 q3).
Well now this might sound silly but honestly I had no idea what a proxy was until last night, so I went and studied it a bit and I got this far:
"Proxy means to act on behalf of another. In the context of a Web server, this means
one server fetching content from another server, then returning it to the client"
and apparently there's 2 kinds of proxy: forward proxy and reverse proxy.
In those 3 pages that I just showed, they were saying before runing php bin\composer global require "laravel/installer=~1.1" you have to set an env var like this: set http_proxy=username:password#proxy_server:port
So now my question is: I still don't know where can I get a proxy like that, should I set it up myself with apache? is that gonna even work? what do I do?
Your thoughts would be appreciated, thank you.
Edit: Environment info:
I'm on windows 7
installed xampp-win32-5.6.14-0-VC11-installer
all of those 5 important extensions are all enabled in phpinfo()
the path= C:\Users\UserName\AppData\Roaming\Composer\vendor\bin is set in environment variables
here's a picture of the whole error
here's the result of php -m i.stack.imgur.com/wz030.png
Some stuff that I tried:
I went into these sites: proxy4free.com us-proxy.org proxylist.hidemyass.com ultraproxies.com,
I tried this: set https_proxy=https://xteamweb.com:xteam#75.55.165.86:8088 and this one: set http_proxy=http://1proxy.space and many others from those sites: i.stack.imgur.com/6YWyp.png
but no matter what, this is the result of all of them: i.stack.imgur.com/mqOrP.png
Still nothing...

Answer 1

Ok here's the solution, if you're having the same problem:
1:
Make sure these are all uncommented in php.ini:
extension=php_openssl.dll
extension=php_curl.dll
extension=php_sockets.dll
extension_dir="E:\xampp\php\ext"
browscap="E:\xampp\php\extras\browscap.ini"
Add these 2 lines at the end of php.ini
curl.cainfo=c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl\cert.pem
openssl.cafile=c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl\cert.pem
2:
Run this: php -r "print_r(openssl_get_cert_locations());"
and you'll get:
Array
(
[default_cert_file] => c:/openssl-1.0.2d-win32/ssl/cert.pem
[default_cert_file_env] => SSL_CERT_FILE
[default_cert_dir] => c:/openssl-1.0.2d-win32/ssl/certs
[default_cert_dir_env] => SSL_CERT_DIR
[default_private_dir] => c:/openssl-1.0.2d-win32/ssl/private
[default_default_cert_area] => c:/openssl-1.0.2d-win32/ssl
[ini_cafile] => c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl\cert.pem
[ini_capath] =>
)
3:
Make these folders:
c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32
c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl
c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl\certs
c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl\private
Download this: http://curl.haxx.se/ca/cacert.pem.
Rename it to cert.pem and put it in c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl\.
Rename it to cert.crt and put it in c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl\certs\.
So:
c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl\cert.pem
c:\openssl-1.0.2d-win32\ssl\certs\cert.crt
4:
Download https://getcomposer.org/Composer-Setup.exe and install it, It will no longer gives u the ERR_CONNECTION error.
Go to c:\users\YOURUSERNAME.
composer.bat should be there, if not create it yourself.
Add c:\users\YOURUSERNAME to your path.
Edit composer.bat and delete what's in it and put this in #php "%~dp0composer.phar" %*.
Download https://getcomposer.org/composer.phar.
Place composer.phar in c:\users\YOURUSERNAME.
5:
Done.
Composer will now install laravel using: composer global require "laravel/installer=~1.1" with no problem.
(Plus: now composer command is available globally instead of using it like: php composer.phar or php bin\composer).