Are there any best practices for handling POST variables to avoid automatic encoding?

When handling POST variables in PHP, it is important to be aware of automatic encoding that may occur, especially with special characters. To avoid this, you can use the `filter_input()` function with the `FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING` filter to sanitize the input and prevent automatic encoding.

$post_variable = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'post_variable', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);