About the External Database Service Plugin

As an external database provider, you can integrate with Wix to allow Wix sites to access and manage data stored anywhere, as if it were hosted natively on Wix.

By implementing this service plugin, you can design your app to:

• Make external business data accessible to Wix sites.
• Make an external database available to Wix users to store their business data.

The integration is done via an app in the Wix App Market and by implementing the External Database service plugin. After the app is installed on a site, Wix triggers a call to your service whenever the site needs to access and interact with the external database.

Managing data with Wix

Wix offers a variety of data management solutions to accommodate common user needs at different scales. This includes support for internal databases hosted directly on Wix, as well as external databases hosted outside the Wix ecosystem.

You can store and manage data directly on Wix using the Wix Data API. Wix also supports managing data hosted on external databases. The External Database Connections API allows Wix Data to communicate with an external database as if it were hosted directly on Wix. Wix offers several out-of-the-box external database integrations for common platforms such as Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS), or Microsoft Azure. These integrations translate Wix Data requests into the external database's protocol, and translate the response back into a format that Wix APIs can read.

To allow Wix Data to communicate with any other data source, implement the External Database service plugin.

Use Cases

Your service can accommodate many scenarios that require Wix Data to communicate with external databases. These might include:

• A business that wants to make its data available for Wix users.
• A Wix user whose data is stored in an external database and wants to query and display that data on their site.
• A Wix app developer who wants to implement ready-for-use external database integrations for specific database services.
• A growing business that wants to store its Wix collections on an external cloud service to scale as needed.

Before you begin:

It's important to note the following before starting to code:

• This service plugin isn't yet supported by the CLI framework.

Terminology

• Collection: A schema that determines the structure of data items to be stored. The schema defines the fields each item contains and the data type of each field.
• Item: A single data entry in a collection.
• External Database: A database hosted by an external service outside of Wix.
• External Database Service Provider: A 3rd-party service that implements an interface to allow Wix Data to interact with an external database.

See also

• About Service Plugin Extensions
• Add a Self-hosted Service Plugin With the SDK
• Add Self-hosted Service Plugin Extensions with REST