What are some best practices for securely handling external API calls in PHP to obtain exchange rates?

When making external API calls in PHP to obtain exchange rates, it is important to securely handle the request to protect sensitive data and prevent potential security vulnerabilities. One best practice is to use HTTPS for secure communication with the API to encrypt the data being transmitted. Additionally, always validate and sanitize input data to prevent injection attacks and only use trusted APIs with proper authentication mechanisms. 

// Example of securely handling external API calls in PHP to obtain exchange rates

// Set API endpoint URL
$api_url = 'https://api.example.com/exchange-rates';

// Set API key for authentication
$api_key = 'your_api_key_here';

// Initialize cURL session
$ch = curl_init();

// Set cURL options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $api_url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, ['Authorization: Bearer ' . $api_key]);

// Execute cURL session
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// Close cURL session
curl_close($ch);

// Process API response
if ($response) {
    $exchange_rates = json_decode($response, true);
    // Handle exchange rates data
} else {
    // Handle API error
}

Keywords

cURL JSON HTTPS API authentication error handling

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