What potential issues can arise when using fsockopen and fgets in PHP scripts for real-time data retrieval?

One potential issue that can arise when using fsockopen and fgets in PHP scripts for real-time data retrieval is that the script may hang or become unresponsive if the server does not respond in a timely manner. To solve this issue, you can set a timeout for the fsockopen function to prevent the script from waiting indefinitely for a response.

$socket = fsockopen($host, $port, $errno, $errstr, $timeout);
if (!$socket) {
    die("Error: $errstr ($errno)");
}

stream_set_timeout($socket, $timeout);

// Now you can use fgets to read data from the socket
$data = fgets($socket);

fclose($socket);