Using Apache and PHP to provide Frontend, possible to use PHP also for backend?

Question

I have a design question to all the programmers out there. Until now, I wrote most of my software in vb.NET oder C#, especially if I needed a Frontend. Now I would like to have a Frontend which is accessible via a Browser, so I would like to use an Apache Server with PHP. That is fine so far, but is it possible to use PHP also as the backend, or what solution would be perfect?

Just to declare my needs: The Frontend should just display some information, and let me change some values (e.g. synchronisation time). The Backend makes frequently SOAP Requests to an API, and gathers some information and creates an .xml file, which needs to be shared via a Webserver.

This frequently task should run about every half an hour (changable via Frontend). But as far as I read, PHP isn't perfect for running frequent tasks, especially if they should be triggered just by the start of the server, and there should also be some auto restart opinion, if the process dies (like a daemon does).

I also need to use Windows as OS, so Linux is unfortunately not an option.

Is any one able, to give me a hint, how this task could be performed?

Thanks and best regards Manuel

Answer 1

For scheduling use Windows Scheduler to have things run on a regular basis. With a configuration file of some sort, that could be modified by your front end, the regularly running task could determine whether or not it was really supposed to do something based on that configuration file.

PHP is perfect for this and we've been doing it in production for years. With an approach like this it would work on Windows or Linux should your server change.