Are there any best practices or recommended methods for efficiently handling and processing textareas in PHP to avoid unnecessary complications or errors?

When handling and processing textareas in PHP, it is important to properly sanitize and validate the input to prevent security vulnerabilities and data corruption. One recommended method is to use the htmlspecialchars() function to escape special characters and prevent XSS attacks. Additionally, you can use trim() to remove any leading or trailing whitespace before processing the textarea input.

// Sanitize and validate textarea input
$textarea_input = trim($_POST['textarea_input']);
$clean_text = htmlspecialchars($textarea_input);

// Process the sanitized textarea input
// Your processing logic goes here