What are the advantages and disadvantages of using fsockopen for HTTP requests in PHP compared to using cURL?

When making HTTP requests in PHP, fsockopen offers lower-level control and flexibility compared to cURL. However, cURL is a higher-level library that provides a more user-friendly interface and supports more protocols and features out of the box. While fsockopen may be more efficient in certain cases, cURL is generally easier to use and more widely supported.

// Using cURL to make an HTTP request
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'http://example.com');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $response;