What are the best practices for handling cURL query results in PHP to optimize performance and reduce server load?

When handling cURL query results in PHP, it is important to optimize performance and reduce server load by efficiently processing the data returned from the query. One way to achieve this is by using the `CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER` option in cURL to store the query result in a variable, and then processing the data as needed without making additional requests.

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

// Set cURL options
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://api.example.com/data');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);

// Execute cURL session and store result in $response
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// Close cURL session
curl_close($ch);

// Process $response as needed
$data = json_decode($response, true);
// Further processing of $data