How can PHP developers ensure that form data is properly validated and sanitized before processing it?

To ensure that form data is properly validated and sanitized before processing it in PHP, developers can use functions like filter_input() to validate input data against a specified filter, and functions like htmlspecialchars() to sanitize data by converting special characters to HTML entities. It's important to always validate and sanitize user input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. 

// Example of validating and sanitizing form data in PHP
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

$username = htmlspecialchars($username);
$email = htmlspecialchars($email);

// Process the sanitized data further

Keywords

PHP form data validation data sanitization security input filtering

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