In the context of PHP programming, why is it important to handle numeric validation and input sanitization when dealing with user input from URLs?

When dealing with user input from URLs in PHP programming, it is important to handle numeric validation and input sanitization to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection attacks and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. Numeric validation ensures that only valid numeric values are accepted, while input sanitization helps to remove any potentially harmful characters or code from the input. 

// Numeric validation and input sanitization example
$input = $_GET['user_input'];

// Validate input as a numeric value
if (is_numeric($input)) {
    // Sanitize the input to remove any potentially harmful characters
    $sanitized_input = filter_var($input, FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT);
    
    // Use the sanitized input in your application
    echo "Sanitized input: " . $sanitized_input;
} else {
    echo "Invalid input. Please enter a numeric value.";
}

Keywords

PHP numeric validation input sanitization user input URLs

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