What are the potential benefits of using cURL for making API requests in PHP?

When making API requests in PHP, using cURL can provide several benefits such as better performance, more flexibility in handling requests, and support for various protocols like HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, etc. cURL also allows for customization of headers, cookies, and authentication methods, making it a powerful tool for interacting with APIs.

// 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 the response
$response = curl_exec($ch);

// Close cURL session
curl_close($ch);

// Process the API response
$data = json_decode($response, true);

// Use the API response data
var_dump($data);