What are some potential challenges faced by PHP beginners when working with external files like YAML in their code?

One potential challenge faced by PHP beginners when working with external files like YAML is properly reading and parsing the YAML data. To solve this, beginners can use the Symfony YAML component, which provides easy-to-use functions for reading and parsing YAML files in PHP.

// Include the Symfony YAML component
require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

// Read and parse a YAML file
$data = Symfony\Component\Yaml\Yaml::parseFile('data.yml');

// Access the parsed data
var_dump($data);