How can PHP developers ensure that user input is properly sanitized and validated to prevent malicious attacks like SQL injection?

To prevent SQL injection attacks, PHP developers can sanitize and validate user input using functions like `mysqli_real_escape_string()` to escape special characters and `filter_var()` to validate input against specific filters. Additionally, prepared statements can be used to safely execute SQL queries with user input. 

// Sanitize and validate user input to prevent SQL injection
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$clean_input = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $user_input);
$validated_input = filter_var($clean_input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Prepare and execute SQL query using validated input
$stmt = $connection->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $validated_input);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

PHP input validation sanitization SQL injection security

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