How can one improve the security of PHP code, especially when dealing with user input?

When dealing with user input in PHP, it is crucial to sanitize and validate the data to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. One way to improve the security of PHP code is to use functions like filter_input() and htmlspecialchars() to sanitize user input and prevent malicious code execution. 

// Sanitize user input using filter_input()
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Validate user input using htmlspecialchars()
$email = htmlspecialchars($_POST['email']);

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting input validation prepared statements password hashing

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