Are there any best practices for handling form input data types in PHP to avoid unexpected errors?

When handling form input data types in PHP, it is important to validate and sanitize the input to avoid unexpected errors such as SQL injection or invalid data types being passed to functions. One best practice is to use PHP's filter_input function to validate and sanitize input data before using it in your application.

// Validate and sanitize form input data
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Check if the input data is valid
if ($username && $email) {
    // Process the input data
    echo "Username: " . $username . "<br>";
    echo "Email: " . $email;
} else {
    // Handle invalid input data
    echo "Invalid input data";
}