What are the potential pitfalls of using file_get_contents in PHP, as seen in the provided code snippet?

Using file_get_contents in PHP can potentially lead to security vulnerabilities, especially when fetching files from external sources. This is because it does not provide the same level of control and validation as other methods like cURL. To mitigate this risk, it is recommended to use cURL with proper error handling and data validation to ensure the safety of your application. 

$url = 'https://www.example.com/data.txt';

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);

$response = curl_exec($ch);

if($response === false){
    echo 'Error: ' . curl_error($ch);
} else {
    // Process the response data
    echo $response;
}

curl_close($ch);

Keywords

file_get_contents security vulnerability remote file inclusion error handling data validation

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