Integrating a third-party API in PHP with error handling and data validation
I've spent hours debugging this and I'm getting frustrated with For a client project, I need to integrate with a third-party API that provides weather data. The API requires an API key and returns JSON responses. I started by using `cURL` to make my requests but ran into issues with how to handle potential errors, like timeouts or invalid responses. Here’s the basic structure I’ve put together: ```php function fetchWeatherData($city) { $apiKey = 'YOUR_API_KEY'; $url = "https://api.weatherapi.com/v1/current.json?key={$apiKey}&q={$city}"; $ch = curl_init(); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 10); $response = curl_exec($ch); $httpCode = curl_getinfo($ch, CURLINFO_HTTP_CODE); curl_close($ch); if ($httpCode !== 200) { throw new Exception('Error fetching data: ' . $httpCode); } return json_decode($response, true); } ``` This function seems to work for valid requests, but I haven’t implemented any data validation yet. I want to ensure that the returned data not only comes back correctly but also contains what I expect (like checking if the `current` object exists in the JSON response). I’ve read about using `filter_var` to validate data but am unsure how to apply it correctly here. Should I validate the city input before making the request, or focus on the response validation after I get the data? Additionally, what’s a good way to handle rate limiting since the API has a limit of 100 requests per hour? I’ve also thought about implementing a simple retry mechanism when receiving a 429 response, but I’m not sure how to structure that in my code. Any insights or examples would be greatly appreciated! This is happening in both development and production on Debian. Could someone point me to the right documentation? Any ideas what could be causing this?