How can PHP developers ensure that HTML code is properly displayed and formatted when echoing database data on a webpage?

When echoing database data on a webpage, PHP developers can ensure that HTML code is properly displayed and formatted by using the htmlspecialchars() function to escape any special characters in the data. This will prevent any HTML or JavaScript code from being executed and will display the data as plain text on the webpage.

<?php
// Retrieve data from the database
$data = "<h1>Hello, World!</h1>";

// Display the data on the webpage using htmlspecialchars()
echo htmlspecialchars($data);
?>