What best practices should be followed to ensure headers are not sent prematurely in PHP scripts?

To ensure headers are not sent prematurely in PHP scripts, it is important to make sure that no output is sent to the browser before calling functions like header(). This can be achieved by placing all header-related functions at the beginning of the script before any other output. Additionally, using output buffering functions like ob_start() and ob_end_flush() can help prevent premature header sending.

<?php
ob_start(); // Start output buffering

// Place header-related functions at the beginning of the script
header('Content-Type: text/html');

// Other PHP code goes here

ob_end_flush(); // Flush output buffer and send output to the browser
?>