Are there any best practices to follow when loading external websites in PHP?

When loading external websites in PHP, it is important to consider security implications such as preventing cross-site scripting attacks and ensuring data integrity. One best practice is to use the cURL library in PHP, which allows for secure communication with external websites. Additionally, validating and sanitizing input data before using it in the request can help prevent security vulnerabilities.

$url = 'https://www.example.com';

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

if($response === false){
    echo 'Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    echo $response;
}

curl_close($ch);