Parse, PHP, and cURL on Windows Azure

August 26, 2015

I was recently trying to use Parse’s PHP SDK and was running into some issues when I deployed the project to Azure. Whenever I would attempt to run any of the Parse scripts I would get a 500 Internal Server Error.

It turns out that Parse is using cURL which does not ship with it’s own CA certificate bundle. To fix the problem I needed to specify a CA cert bundle for PHP’s cURL. All the steps below can be accomplished in the Kudu interface which you can access at [your-azure-site-name].scm.azurewebsites.net.

1. Create Custom php.ini

• In the Kudu console, click on the planet-looking icon.
• From there go in the config folder, and then in the PHP-5.5.18 folder (or whatever version you’re using).
• Run copy php.ini d:\home\site to copy it to your site folder.
• Click the Home icon, and then go in the site folder to find your copy of php.ini.
• Edit the file. Add the following line:

  curl.cainfo ="D:\home\site\ca-bundle.crt"
  

2. Create applicationhost.xdt

• While still at D:\home\site\ create a new file.

  echo temp > applicationhost.xdt
  

• Edit the file and paste in the following contents: ``` <?xml version=”1.0”?>

- Make sure to change the php version if needed.

**3. Create ca-bundle.crt**

- While still at `D:\home\site\` create a new file.

echo temp > ca-bundle.crt ```

• Edit the file and paste the contents of ca-bundle.crt found here:
  http://curl.haxx.se/docs/caextract.html

4. Restart the site

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References

• https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Xdt-transform-samples#using-a-custom-phpini
• http://blogs.msdn.com/b/azureossds/archive/2015/06/12/verify-peer-certificate-from-php-curl-for-azure-apps.aspx
• http://ea.tl/2012/02/02/windows-php-curl-ssl-certificate-problem.html

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