How can one improve error handling and response parsing in PHP scripts that rely on external data sources?

When relying on external data sources in PHP scripts, it is important to implement robust error handling and response parsing to handle potential issues such as network errors, timeouts, or invalid data formats. One way to improve error handling is to use try-catch blocks to catch exceptions and handle them gracefully. Additionally, parsing the response from external sources using functions like json_decode() can help ensure that the data is properly formatted before processing it further. 

try {
    $response = file_get_contents('https://api.example.com/data');
    
    if ($response === false) {
        throw new Exception('Failed to retrieve data from external source');
    }
    
    $data = json_decode($response, true);
    
    if (json_last_error() !== JSON_ERROR_NONE) {
        throw new Exception('Error parsing JSON response');
    }
    
    // Process the data here
    
} catch (Exception $e) {
    echo 'Error: ' . $e->getMessage();
}

Keywords

Exception handling cURL JSON parsing error codes try-catch block

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