How can PHP developers ensure proper data validation and sanitization when receiving user input from forms to prevent security vulnerabilities?
To ensure proper data validation and sanitization when receiving user input from forms in PHP, developers should use functions like filter_input() and filter_var() to validate input data and prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. Additionally, developers should sanitize input data using functions like htmlentities() or htmlspecialchars() to prevent malicious code execution.
// Validate and sanitize user input from a form field named 'email'
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);
$email = htmlspecialchars($email);
// Validate and sanitize user input from a form field named 'password'
$password = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'password', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$password = htmlentities($password);