How can you ensure the security of data retrieved from the $_POST array in PHP?

To ensure the security of data retrieved from the $_POST array in PHP, you should always sanitize and validate the input to prevent common security vulnerabilities like SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. One way to do this is by using functions like htmlspecialchars() to escape special characters and filter_input() to validate input against a specified filter. 

// Sanitize and validate data retrieved from the $_POST array
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Use the sanitized and validated data
if ($username && $email) {
    // Process the data securely
} else {
    // Handle invalid input
}

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting (XSS) htmlspecialchars prepared statements data validation

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