Is It Possible To Create Backend Services With PHP?

Hello! I am just wondering if it’s possible to create backend services with PHP, or if that’s a feature that the team is working on or going to add? Same goes with SQL and other backend languages. Thanks!

I am not a Netlify team member, but there is not currently a backend server on Hosting of a site at Netlify, because it is using a CDN to host your site and assets. You can use PHP during the build processing of your site prior to the deploy to the CDN end nodes.

A team member can answer plans for support of backend services in the future. I will take a guess that those services would come in the form of API services and not hosting if they were provided.

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@talves is correct that there is currently no way to run PHP on our service except at BUILD TIME, so as code that creates your site for later static browsing.

I don’t think we’re going to add any more languages in the near future to our only dynamic offering, Functions: Functions overview | Netlify Docs

For SQL we definitely don’t plan to become a database host but you can use other hosting services such as firebase (we use this from our app - it allows you securely write from a public webpage), or Fauna (example here: Building a Serverless JAMStack app with Fauna: Part 1). You can also access other more traditional hosting providers such as Amazon from a function; this example implementation via functions will show you how to do so: code-examples/function_examples/token-hider at master · netlify/code-examples · GitHub

But in general, our answer to “I have dynamic portions of my website that are not suited for functions” (which even if we supported PHP, is still most PHP code) is "then you can keep a server running that portion of your code, and proxy to it: Rewrites and proxies | Netlify Docs ". We have no intentions of becoming a database provider. We are working on adding partners (such as Fauna) with whom our system is tightly integrated to do stuff like that. But I don’t think PHP is on anyone’s mind right now :slight_smile:

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I am moving this thread to

#topics:opentalk

feel free to keep discussing and throwing ideas around =)

Thank you! I have not tried functions yet, and I should look into it! :sweat_smile:

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