I had the ionCube Loader working and running on an Azure web app for a few months. Then, about a week ago, PHP started throwing a fatal error regarding ionCube out of the blue. Haven't gotten it to work since. I didn't touch the server for several days prior to this error appearing.
PHP Error:
PHP Fatal error: [ionCube Loader] The Loader must appear as the first entry in the php.ini file in Unknown on line 0
I know this is usually caused by the wrong order of loading PHP extensions. Since I'm on Azure, I cannot fix the loading order in the usual way, since I have no direct access to the php.ini.
It was also working just fine for quite a long time.
My entry in Application Settings:
PHP_ZENDEXTENSIONS bin\ioncube_loader_win_5.5.dll
Any suggestions? Any more information I can provide?
UPDATE: After updating ionCube Loader, PHP now works. The loader doesn't show up as loaded in phpinfo however, and apps using it still can't pick it up. The Loader Wizard gives essentially the same error as I had before:
The ionCube Loader must be the first Zend extension listed in the configuration file, D:\local\Config\PHP-5.5.22\php.ini.
You can load your custom php runtime on Azure Web App. Instructions can be found here under "How to: Use a custom PHP runtime" section
https://github.com/Azure/azure-content/blob/master/articles/web-sites-php-configure.md
Once you configure custom php runtime, you can use your custom php.ini file in which you can define the order of loading for your extensions. Instructions on how to use custom php.ini can be found here:
https://github.com/projectkudu/kudu/wiki/Xdt-transform-samples#using-a-custom-phpini