title: PHP Composer can't parse composer.json file for my project
body: <p>I have successfully installed Composer in the root directory (that was the default choice) on my Linux/Apache server using their installation guide. </p>
  
  <p><a href="http://socketo.me/docs/install" rel="nofollow">http://socketo.me/docs/install</a></p>
  
  <p>It says I need to "create a file called composer.json in your project folder". So I created that file (with the contents they gave on top of their's page) using the notepad and filezilla to download the file to my application's root directory.</p>
  
  <p>Then I open Putty and type:
  <code>cd /var/www/websocket</code> (application directory, where already was placed json file)</p>
  
  <p>Then I run Composer using:</p>
  
  <pre><code>php ~/composer.phar install
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and get following error:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>[Seld\JsonLint\ParsingException] "./composer.json" does not contain
    valid JSON Parse error on line 1:    php ~/composer.phar    ^<br>
    Expected one of: 'STRING', 'NUMBER', 'NULL', 'TRUE', 'FALSE', '{', '['</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>My composer.json file contains, in accordance to instructions, </p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>php ~/composer.phar require cboden/ratchet</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>What I should to do to install it properly?</p>