Are there any best practices or guidelines to follow when implementing a comment function on a website using PHP?

When implementing a comment function on a website using PHP, it is important to sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. Additionally, consider implementing user authentication to ensure that only logged-in users can leave comments. Lastly, use prepared statements to interact with the database to prevent SQL injection vulnerabilities. 

// Sanitize user input
$comment = htmlspecialchars($_POST['comment']);

// Implement user authentication
if(isset($_SESSION['user_id'])) {
    $user_id = $_SESSION['user_id'];
} else {
    // Redirect to login page
    header("Location: login.php");
    exit();
}

// Use prepared statements to interact with the database
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO comments (user_id, comment) VALUES (:user_id, :comment)");
$stmt->bindParam(':user_id', $user_id);
$stmt->bindParam(':comment', $comment);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

SQL injection XSS vulnerabilities prepared statements sanitization validation

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