What are the drawbacks of using polling in PHP scripts to check for updates or changes in external files?

Using polling in PHP scripts to check for updates in external files can lead to high server load and inefficient resource usage. A better approach would be to use event-driven programming or webhooks to receive notifications when changes occur in the external files, rather than continuously polling for updates. 

// Example of using webhooks to receive notifications for changes in external files

// Set up a webhook URL to receive notifications
$webhookUrl = "https://example.com/webhook";

// Simulate receiving a notification from the external file
$notification = "File updated";

// Send a POST request to the webhook URL with the notification
$ch = curl_init($webhookUrl);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, json_encode($notification));
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Content-Type: application/json'));
curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

Keywords

polling PHP scripts updates external files drawbacks

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