What are common challenges when parsing URLs in PHP and how can they be overcome?

One common challenge when parsing URLs in PHP is dealing with special characters or encoding issues. To overcome this, you can use the `urldecode()` function to decode any encoded characters in the URL.

$url = "https://www.example.com/page?param=value%20with%20spaces";
$decoded_url = urldecode($url);

echo $decoded_url;