How should PHP developers handle user input validation and sanitization to prevent security vulnerabilities like SQL Injection?
To prevent security vulnerabilities like SQL Injection, PHP developers should always validate and sanitize user input before using it in database queries. This can be done by using prepared statements with parameterized queries, input validation functions, and escaping user input data.
// Example of using prepared statements with parameterized queries to prevent SQL Injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();