How can PHP be used to validate input data before storing it in a database?

When storing input data in a database, it is crucial to validate the data to prevent SQL injection attacks and ensure data integrity. PHP can be used to validate input data by sanitizing and validating user input before storing it in the database. This can be done by using PHP functions like filter_var() to sanitize input and regular expressions to validate input against specific patterns. 

// Example of validating and sanitizing input data before storing it in a database

// Retrieve user input from a form
$input_data = $_POST['input_data'];

// Sanitize the input data
$sanitized_data = filter_var($input_data, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Validate the input data against a specific pattern
if (preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z0-9]+$/", $sanitized_data)) {
    // Input data is valid, proceed to store it in the database
    // $db->query("INSERT INTO table_name (column_name) VALUES ('$sanitized_data')");
} else {
    // Input data is not valid, display an error message to the user
    echo "Invalid input data. Please enter alphanumeric characters only.";
}

Keywords

PHP input validation database data storage error handling

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