Are there any security concerns to be aware of when allowing user input for date selection in a PHP calendar application?

When allowing user input for date selection in a PHP calendar application, a security concern to be aware of is the potential for SQL injection attacks if the input is directly used in database queries. To prevent this, always validate and sanitize user input before using it in any SQL queries. One way to do this is by using prepared statements with parameterized queries to securely handle user input. 

// Assuming $userInput is the user-provided date input
$userInput = $_POST['date'];

// Validate and sanitize the user input
$validatedDate = date('Y-m-d', strtotime($userInput));

// Use prepared statements to safely insert the validated date into a database query
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO calendar_events (event_date) VALUES (:event_date)");
$stmt->bindParam(':event_date', $validatedDate);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting input validation date formatting PHP DateTime.

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