What are the best practices for handling file existence checks in PHP scripts when accessing files on external servers?

When accessing files on external servers in PHP scripts, it is important to check for the existence of the file before attempting to access it to avoid errors. One way to handle file existence checks is by using the `file_exists()` function in PHP, which returns true if the file exists and false if it does not. 

$remoteFile = 'https://www.example.com/file.txt';

if (file_exists($remoteFile)) {
    // File exists, proceed with accessing the file
    $fileContents = file_get_contents($remoteFile);
    echo $fileContents;
} else {
    // File does not exist, handle the error accordingly
    echo 'File does not exist';
}

Keywords

file existence check PHP scripts external servers error handling file access

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