Are there any common pitfalls to avoid when handling form submissions in PHP, especially with regards to $_POST variables?

One common pitfall when handling form submissions in PHP is not properly sanitizing and validating user input from $_POST variables, which can leave your application vulnerable to security risks such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To avoid this, always sanitize and validate user input before using it in your application. 

// Example of sanitizing and validating user input from $_POST variables
$name = isset($_POST['name']) ? htmlspecialchars(trim($_POST['name'])) : '';
$email = isset($_POST['email']) ? filter_var(trim($_POST['email']), FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL) : '';

// Use the sanitized and validated variables in your application
if (!empty($name) && !empty($email)) {
    // Process the form submission
} else {
    // Handle validation errors
}

Keywords

$_POST form submissions security vulnerabilities data validation injection attacks

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