What are some best practices for utilizing sockets in PHP for efficient communication?

When utilizing sockets in PHP for efficient communication, it is important to properly handle errors, close the socket connection when done, and use non-blocking I/O operations to prevent blocking the script execution.

// Create a socket
$socket = socket_create(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, SOL_TCP);

// Connect to a remote server
if (!socket_connect($socket, '127.0.0.1', 8080)) {
    die('Could not connect to server');
}

// Send data to the server
socket_write($socket, 'Hello, server!', strlen('Hello, server!'));

// Receive data from the server
$response = socket_read($socket, 1024);

// Close the socket connection
socket_close($socket);