installing laravel dependencies with composer not working

Question

I'm trying to install Laravel Excel using this guide

I have included the line in my composer.json;

"require": {
    "laravel/framework": "4.2.*",
    "maatwebsite/excel": "1.*"
},

I am then attempting to update composer using the command composer update . This results in the following messages....

Warning: This development build of composer is over 30 days old. It is recommended to update it by running "/usr/local/bin/composer self-update" to get the latest version.

Loading composer repositories with package information

The "https://packagist.org/packages.json" file could not be downloaded: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known

failed to open stream: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known

https://packagist.org could not be fully loaded, package information was loaded from the local cache and may be out of date

Updating dependencies (including require-dev)

[Composer\Downloader\TransportException]
The "http://packagist.org/p/jeremeamia/functionparser$cac3105ac0ad3f9a0f9c9ccabcde36787c8d8f404a003fa47900f84cee475a34.json" file could not be downloaded: php_

network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known
  failed to open stream: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known

update [--prefer-source] [--prefer-dist] [--dry-run] [--dev] [--no-dev] [--lock] [--no-plugins] [--no-custom-installers] [--no-scripts] [--no-progress] [--with-dependencies] [-v|vv|vvv|--verbose] [-o|--optimize-autoloader] [--ignore-platform-reqs] [packages1] ... [packagesN]

When I try to self-update composer (as recommended in the warning message) I get the following;

[Composer\Downloader\TransportException]
  The "https://getcomposer.org/version" file could not be downloaded: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known
  failed to open stream: php_network_getaddresses: getaddrinfo failed: Name or service not known

So my first problem is that I cannot update composer.

My second problem is that I do not think Laravel Excel has been installed because I cannot see it in the vendor/laravel directory anywhere (isn't that where all the dependencies are usually stored?)

I am a complete beginner when it comes to using composer and installing dependencies and I've not really even used a JSON file before until now so really struggling here...

Answer 1

I had faced the same problem. Later, I came to know that my proxy not allowing me to update the composer. So, check your proxy settings.

Answer 2

For Linux users (Centos 6,7) Check your name servers that you have in /etc/resolv.conf working properly with the below command

nslookup www.google.com

If it is not working used the google public name server at 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4

nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4