How can PHP developers handle situations where file_get_contents does not return any data, especially when dealing with gzip-compressed pages?

When using file_get_contents to fetch data from a URL that is gzip-compressed, the function may not return any data due to the compression. To handle this situation, PHP developers can use the PHP cURL extension to make the request and automatically handle gzip compression. This ensures that the data is properly decompressed and returned.

$url = 'https://example.com/page';
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_ENCODING, ''); // handle all encodings
$data = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

if ($data === false) {
    echo 'Error fetching data';
} else {
    // Process the fetched data
    echo $data;
}