One of the things I’ve always wanted to write, ever since I started writing web backends, is a proper extendable (plugin) framework in PHP. I’ve spent a little time searching for something that would fit my needs, but surprisingly there are very few free, documented plugin frameworks available. Though, I know there are some PHP applications out there that have very good backends (my favorite so far is Gallery 2), but they haven’t released the backend as a standalone package that is documented for others to write their own programs.

A plugin framework is nothing new, as there have been many great minds who have worked on the subject, so I shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel. I started my search with the well known Eclipse. After delving into the development docs, I found that Eclipse 3 is built on top of the OSGi framework and JPF. So, delving in further, I read the spec on the OSGi framework and, after much thought, I believe it is possible to implement this framework in PHP and, at the same time, break new ground in PHP development by adding features that have never been done before (in PHP).
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