How important is it to sanitize and validate user input in PHP applications?

It is crucial to sanitize and validate user input in PHP applications to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other malicious attacks. Sanitizing input involves removing or encoding potentially harmful characters, while validation ensures that the input meets the expected format and data type. 

// Sanitize and validate user input example
$input = $_POST['user_input'];

// Sanitize input
$sanitized_input = filter_var($input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Validate input
if (filter_var($sanitized_input, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    // Input is a valid email address
    // Proceed with further processing
} else {
    // Input is not a valid email address
    // Handle the error accordingly
}

Keywords

Sanitize Validate User Input PHP applications Security

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