Universal modules are PHP packages built to be framework agnostic. They integrate and run easily with any package.

Every modern PHP framework comes with a container. The container provides the framework with configured instances of services. If you are a package developer and you need to integrate with a particular framework, you usually need to write a meta-package that explains to the framework how to configure its container. If you want to support 5 frameworks, you have to write 5 modules. On the opposite side, as a user, if the package author did not write a meta-package for your particular framework, it gets harder to use his package.

That's where universal modules come into play. Universal modules have the ability to put services into any framework's container.

How is this different from container-interop/service-provider?

Universal modules are built on top of container-interop's service providers.

The container-interop/service-provider project contains the base ServiceProvider interface allowing packages to provide services to all compatible frameworks. The interface is meant to be a standard that can be adopted easily. By design, the container-interop/service-provider project does not enforce anything regarding naming, performances, etc...

This universal modules norm offers an additional set of rules that are more opinionated and extend the standard.

For instance, universal modules have:

• A strict naming policy for services
• Puli integration: they are automatically detected by your framework

This website also provides a set of advices for universal module writers allowing them to:

• write modules that are truly interoperable
• write service providers that have the best possible performance