What are some best practices for securely retrieving content from HTTPS URLs in PHP?

When retrieving content from HTTPS URLs in PHP, it is important to ensure that the connection is secure and that the data is encrypted. One best practice is to use the cURL library, which provides easy-to-use functions for making HTTP requests with support for HTTPS. By setting appropriate options in the cURL request, such as verifying the SSL certificate and setting the protocol to HTTPS, you can securely retrieve content from HTTPS URLs in PHP.

$url = 'https://example.com/api/data';
$ch = curl_init($url);

// Set cURL options for secure HTTPS connection
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, 2);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

if($response === false){
    echo 'cURL error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    echo $response;
}

curl_close($ch);