Amazon adds PHP support to Elastic Beanstalk

Amazon has broadened the language support for its automated cloud platform Elastic Beanstalk to include PHP.

Additionally, applications can now be deployed via the Git version control system, the company announced on Tuesday. The update means developers can write applications in either Java or PHP, then use Elastic Beanstalk to automate their deployment onto Amazon's suite of Amazon Web Services cloud technologies.

"Is there a 'one-size-fits-all' in the development platform space? No, each platform fits the needs of different developers, applications, and use cases. Preference and familiarity also play a role in why some developers choose one over the other," Werner Vogels, Amazon's chief technology officer, wrote in a blog post. "Ultimately, we want developers to successfully run and manage reliable, highly scalable applications on AWS, irrespective of the abstraction that their development platform of choice offers."

The Git version control system lets people set up their code repositories on Github to automatically deploy changes to their AWS Elastic Beanstalk instances.

Applications coded in PHP can work with Amazon's MySQL database service, Amazon RDS, and via the AWS SDK for PHP, with its NoSQL SSD-backed DynamoDB technology as well.

Elastic Beanstalk was introduced in January 2011 and, at the time Vogels said he wanted the technology to encourage companies and developers to build more and more application-specific platforms on top of AWS.