What are some alternative options to cURL for executing HTTP requests in PHP, especially when cURL is not available?

When cURL is not available in PHP, you can use alternative libraries like Guzzle or file_get_contents to execute HTTP requests. Guzzle is a popular HTTP client library that provides a more user-friendly interface for making HTTP requests in PHP. file_get_contents is a built-in PHP function that can be used to fetch the contents of a URL.

// Using Guzzle to make an HTTP request
require 'vendor/autoload.php'; // Include Guzzle library

$client = new GuzzleHttp\Client();
$response = $client->request('GET', 'https://example.com');
$body = $response->getBody()->getContents();
echo $body;

// Using file_get_contents to make an HTTP request
$response = file_get_contents('https://example.com');
echo $response;