PHP Now Runs Natively on the $4 ESP32 Microcontroller in Official v1.0.0 Release

A project called PHP on ESP32 has reached its first official release, enabling the unmodified Zend engine — the same interpreter powering standard PHP — to run directly on Espressif's ESP32 microcontroller without an underlying operating system. The chip, which costs around four dollars, cross-compiles real PHP code so that standard functions like array_map, json_encode, and preg_match behave identically to their desktop counterparts. Developers can use PHP scripts to control hardware pins, serve HTTP pages, and even run frameworks such as Laravel and Symfony on higher-end ESP32 variants with sufficient PSRAM. One demonstration example turns the ESP32 into a standalone WiFi access point that serves a live PHP webpage allowing users to control an onboard RGB LED from a smartphone, with no cloud service or companion app required. The release supports a broad range of PHP language features including classes, closures, enums, and PDO SQLite, making the full language available for embedded development.
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