[php] How to change PHP version used by composer

Another possibility to make composer think you're using the correct version of PHP is to add to the config section of a composer.json file a platform option, like this:

"config": {
    "platform": {
        "php": "<ver>"
    }
},

Where <ver> is the PHP version of your choice.

Snippet from the docs:

Lets you fake platform packages (PHP and extensions) so that you can emulate a production env or define your target platform in the config. Example: {"php": "7.0.3", "ext-something": "4.0.3"}.