Adding a namespace to Laravel 4 - namespaces

Question

I'm having a problem using a namespace in Laravel4.
We have built an API using Laravel3, in which we created an entire namespaced directory called Components which the RESTful Laravel controllers accessed to perform the logic on each request. The Components namespace was created in this manner so as to allow us to re-use the logic across several applications to keep things DRY.
In Laravel3, in the application/start.php file it was a simple matter of adding:
Autoloader::namespaces(array(
'Components' => 'path\to\Components',
));
This allowed us to simply reference a static method then in any of our RESTful controllers simply by
$result = Components\Services\Common::method();
In Laravel4, it is obviously a different approach. I have added the following to the composer.json file
"autoload": {
"classmap": [
"app/commands",
"app/controllers",
"app/models",
"app/database/migrations",
"app/database/seeds",
"app/tests/TestCase.php"
],
"psr-0": {
"Components": "path/to/API/Components"
}
},
and ran the composer dump-autoload command to add the namespace to the autoload_namespaces.php file.
However, I cannot reference the namespace in any of my new controllers in Laravel4. I just get a "Class 'Components\Services\Common' not found" in HomeController.php.
I have checked in the autoload_real.php file and output the loader variable, where my new namespace is listed under the 'C' element of the array. But no joy in using it.
I know the namespace works as it is in constant use with our Laravel3 applciation. I would rather not replicate the directory into our new Laravel4 application, otherwise the reason we designed things this way will be negated and we'll end up maintaining two codebases. The namespace directory exists within our web root directory but outside of both our Laravel3 and Laravel4 applications.
Thanks for the help guys

Answer 1

If your namespace is
Components
And your application is in
/var/www/application
And your namespaced classes are inside the subfolder
app/API
And this is an example of class file name:
/var/www/application/app/API/Components/Services/Common.php
Then you have to add to your composer json:
"autoload": {
"psr-0": {
"Components": "app/API"
}
},
If you are loading from another base path and your namespaced classes are in /var/www/Components, you can:
"autoload": {
"psr-0": {
"Components": "/var/www"
}
},
But if they are in /var/www/components/Components, then you have to
"autoload": {
"psr-0": {
"Components": "/var/www/components"
}
},
Because "Components" is the base of your namespaces and will always be added to the path before Composer search files to autoload.