What alternatives exist for handling external content loading in PHP applications to mitigate potential delays and failures?

When loading external content in PHP applications, potential delays and failures can be mitigated by using asynchronous requests or caching mechanisms. Asynchronous requests allow the application to continue functioning while waiting for the external content to load, reducing the impact of delays. Caching mechanisms store previously loaded content locally, reducing the need to fetch it from the external source again.

// Example of using asynchronous requests with cURL in PHP
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://example.com/external-content');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, 0);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 5); // Set timeout to prevent long delays
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, true); // Follow redirects if needed

curl_multi_exec($ch, $running);
curl_multi_close($ch);