In what ways can PHP developers optimize their code to efficiently process and display real-time exchange rate data on a website?

To efficiently process and display real-time exchange rate data on a website, PHP developers can optimize their code by implementing caching mechanisms to reduce the number of API calls and improve response times. Additionally, they can use asynchronous requests to fetch exchange rate data in the background without blocking the main thread. Lastly, developers can consider using a content delivery network (CDN) to cache and serve static exchange rate data to users for faster loading times.

// Example code snippet using caching to optimize exchange rate data retrieval

// Check if exchange rate data is stored in cache
$exchange_rate_data = apc_fetch('exchange_rate_data');

if (!$exchange_rate_data) {
    // If not in cache, make API call to fetch exchange rate data
    $api_url = 'https://api.exchangerate-api.com/latest';
    $response = file_get_contents($api_url);
    $exchange_rate_data = json_decode($response);

    // Store exchange rate data in cache for future use
    apc_store('exchange_rate_data', $exchange_rate_data, 3600); // Cache for 1 hour
}

// Display exchange rate data on the website
echo '1 USD = ' . $exchange_rate_data->rates->EUR . ' EUR';