Is native PHP support for Web Sockets available?

There isn't native support in terms of there being a standard PHP WebSocket object natively available.

You'll need to use a library.

The next thing to consider is how the WebSocket server runs. Normally PHP runs in Apache, Nginx (via FastCGI) or on Microsoft IIS (via Fast CGI). With Apache and IIS this may be a problem as it's not really built with persistent connections such as WebSockets in mind. I'm not sure about Nginx. This is why most PHP WebSocket libraries will be built as standalone libraries to be run as their own processes.

See:

• Apache Module: https://github.com/disconnect/apache-websocket
• Ratchet: https://github.com/cboden/Ratchet
• Wrench: https://github.com/varspool/Wrench
• PHP WebSocket: http://code.google.com/p/phpwebsocket/

Note: IE10 is now released in Windows 8

Also see: Ajax push system

Yes, it's possible to do PHP + Websocket very simply, without any third party library (like Ratchet, often mentioned).

This article is a great lightweight example. (I lost hours with complex solutions, all of them including a few libraries, until I found this useful, simple, article)

You can find more detailed instructions about this here: How to create websockets server in PHP.

It uses a constantly-running PHP server, that you start from command-line with php websockets.php, with an event-loop (similar to the Node.JS way). It's 100% possible to use native PHP functions like socket_create, etc.