In what ways can PHP developers optimize their scripts to ensure continuous functionality for web-based applications that require persistent connections?

Persistent connections can be optimized by using connection pooling to reduce the overhead of establishing a new connection for each request. By reusing existing connections, PHP developers can improve the performance and scalability of their web-based applications. One way to implement connection pooling in PHP is by using a connection manager class that maintains a pool of database connections and assigns them to requests as needed.

class ConnectionManager {
    private static $connections = [];

    public static function getConnection($dsn, $username, $password) {
        $key = md5($dsn . $username . $password);
        
        if (!isset(self::$connections[$key])) {
            self::$connections[$key] = new PDO($dsn, $username, $password);
        }
        
        return self::$connections[$key];
    }
}

// Example of using connection pooling
$dsn = 'mysql:host=localhost;dbname=test';
$username = 'username';
$password = 'password';

$connection = ConnectionManager::getConnection($dsn, $username, $password);

// Use $connection for executing queries