What best practices should be followed when setting up a web proxy with PHP to ensure optimal performance and security?

When setting up a web proxy with PHP, it is important to follow best practices to ensure optimal performance and security. This includes sanitizing user input to prevent injection attacks, implementing caching mechanisms to improve performance, and using HTTPS to encrypt data transmission for security.

// Sanitize user input to prevent injection attacks
$url = filter_var($_GET['url'], FILTER_SANITIZE_URL);

// Implement caching mechanisms to improve performance
$cacheFile = 'cache/' . md5($url);
if (file_exists($cacheFile) && (time() - filemtime($cacheFile) < 3600)) {
    echo file_get_contents($cacheFile);
} else {
    $data = file_get_contents($url);
    file_put_contents($cacheFile, $data);
    echo $data;
}

// Use HTTPS to encrypt data transmission for security
$context = stream_context_create([
    'ssl' => [
        'verify_peer' => true,
        'verify_peer_name' => true
    ]
]);
$data = file_get_contents($url, false, $context);
echo $data;