How can PHP developers effectively validate and sanitize user input to prevent security vulnerabilities in dynamic content inclusion?

To prevent security vulnerabilities in dynamic content inclusion, PHP developers should validate and sanitize user input to ensure that only safe and expected data is processed. This can be achieved by using functions like filter_input() to validate input against predefined filters and by sanitizing input using functions like htmlspecialchars() to prevent cross-site scripting attacks.

// Validate and sanitize user input for dynamic content inclusion
$user_input = filter_input(INPUT_GET, 'input_param', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Use sanitized input in dynamic content inclusion
include 'path/to/file/' . $user_input . '.php';