How can PHP be used to interact with a proxy server for authentication without displaying a login prompt to the user?

When interacting with a proxy server for authentication in PHP, you can use the cURL library to send the authentication credentials in the request headers without displaying a login prompt to the user. This can be achieved by setting the CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD option with the username and password for the proxy server.

$proxy = 'proxy.example.com:8080';
$url = 'https://example.com';

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXY, $proxy);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_PROXYUSERPWD, 'username:password');

$response = curl_exec($ch);

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

curl_close($ch);