How can PHP developers optimize server performance when handling large data downloads from external sources?

When handling large data downloads from external sources, PHP developers can optimize server performance by utilizing streaming techniques to avoid loading the entire file into memory at once. This can be achieved by using functions like `fopen`, `fread`, and `fpassthru` to read and output the file in chunks, reducing memory usage and improving performance. 

$fileUrl = 'http://example.com/largefile.zip';

$remoteFile = fopen($fileUrl, 'rb');

header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="largefile.zip"');

while (!feof($remoteFile)) {
    echo fread($remoteFile, 8192);
    ob_flush();
    flush();
}

fclose($remoteFile);

Keywords

PHP server performance large data downloads external sources optimization

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