How can PHP developers handle redirects or URL changes when loading external files?

When loading external files in PHP, developers may encounter issues with redirects or URL changes that can disrupt the loading process. To handle this, developers can use the cURL library in PHP to follow redirects and handle URL changes seamlessly.

$url = 'http://example.com/external-file.txt';

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

$response = curl_exec($ch);

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

curl_close($ch);