Can I use the PHP SDK on a plain PHP app with no framework?
Legacy app here. Plain PHP, no Laravel or Symfony anywhere and no plan to add one. I want to render one personalized slot server-side.
Every example points at a framework package. Does the core SDK work on its own and how do I fetch a slot safely without something blowing up the page.
2 answers
Yes, the core PHP SDK works standalone. The Laravel, Symfony, and Drupal packages are convenience layers on top of it, so on a plain app you just use the core one directly, no framework required.
The thing to get right is the fallback. Fetch the slot content server-side and pass a fallback so a failed request returns the default instead of throwing. Content resolves server-side, so there is no client flicker either way, the HTML goes out already personalized. The Laravel server-side SDK thread shows the same fetch-with-fallback shape if you want a fuller example, the core call is the same minus the framework glue.
One thing to pin down before you ship: the slot version. Use a versioned slot ID like home-hero@2. If you omit the version you get latest, which means a later publish that changes the slot schema can silently drift out from under your code and break the page.
Pin it explicitly. Then a new version only reaches you when you bump the number, not the moment someone hits publish in the dashboard.
Good call on the pinned version, was about to leave it off. Core package it is