Function injection overview
Netlify Functions open a world of possibilities for running on-demand, server-side code without having to run a dedicated server. Your extension can inject serverless functions, including background functions and scheduled functions, into sites during the build step.
With Netlify Functions, your extension can provide a wide range of functionality, such as:
- APIs. Create custom APIs to interact with external services or databases.
- Dynamic images. Generate images on the fly.
- Background tasks. Perform longer-running function tasks in the background, like batch processing and scraping.
- Scheduled tasks. Perform tasks on a regular and consistent schedule, much like a cron job that invokes a set of APIs to collate data every week.
Note that background functions are only available for customers on Core Pro and Core Enterprise plans, so any functionality that your extension includes that uses background functions may not work for all users.
Once you publish your extension, it will be available for Netlify users to install on their teams. Please note there are usage and billing implications for your extension users when you inject functions.
Usage and billing
It’s important to note that Netlify Functions have billing implications for your extension users based on usage, across all plans. We recommend that you review the usage and billing documentation and that you highlight the use of functions in your extension’s user documentation.
Note that it’s the extension users that incur any costs for Functions service usage, not extension authors.
Documentation
- Get started: how to install the Netlify SDK, generate the boilerplate files, and add code to create and inject a function.
- Debug & test: how to test your extension with function injection locally.