In what situations is it recommended to use cURL instead of simplexml_load_file for retrieving external data in PHP?

cURL is recommended over simplexml_load_file when retrieving external data in PHP in situations where you need more control over the request, such as setting custom headers, handling redirects, or making POST requests. cURL also provides better error handling and supports a wider range of protocols. 

// Using cURL to retrieve external data
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://example.com/data.xml');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

if($response === false) {
    echo 'Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    // Process the response data
    $xml = simplexml_load_string($response);
    // Do something with $xml
}

curl_close($ch);

Keywords

cURL simplexml_load_file external data PHP retrieval

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