title: installing laravel dependencies with composer not working
body: <p>I'm trying to install Laravel Excel using <a href="http://www.maatwebsite.nl/laravel-excel/docs/getting-started" rel="nofollow">this guide</a></p>
  
  <p>I have included the line in my composer.json;</p>
  
  <pre><code>"require": {
      "laravel/framework": "4.2.*",
      "maatwebsite/excel": "1.*"
  },
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am then attempting to update composer using the command <code>composer update</code>. This results in the following messages....</p>
  
  <pre><code>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  https://packagist.org could not be fully loaded, package information was loaded from the local cache and may be out of date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]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>When I try to self-update composer (as recommended in the warning message) I get the following;</p>
  
  <pre><code>[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
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So my first problem is that I cannot update composer.</p>
  
  <p>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?)</p>
  
  <p>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...</p>