Are there any best practices for handling form data in PHP to ensure security and efficiency?

When handling form data in PHP, it is important to sanitize and validate the input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. One way to achieve this is by using PHP functions like htmlspecialchars() to escape special characters and filter_var() to validate input. Additionally, storing sensitive data securely in databases and using prepared statements can enhance security. 

// Example code snippet for handling form data securely in PHP

// Sanitize input data using htmlspecialchars
$name = htmlspecialchars($_POST['name']);
$email = htmlspecialchars($_POST['email']);

// Validate email input using filter_var
if (filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    // Process the form data securely
} else {
    echo "Invalid email format";
}

Keywords

SQL injection data validation prepared statements CSRF protection input filtering

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