What are some alternative methods to the file() function for reading a webpage into an array in PHP to avoid errors like "failed to open stream"?

When using the file() function in PHP to read a webpage into an array, you may encounter errors like "failed to open stream" due to various reasons such as incorrect URL, permission issues, or server restrictions. To avoid these errors, you can use alternative methods like cURL or file_get_contents() to fetch the webpage contents and store them in an array.

// Using cURL to read a webpage into an array
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://www.example.com');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
$output = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

// Store the webpage content in an array
$data = explode("\n", $output);
print_r($data);