What are best practices for concatenating and storing strings in PHP for continuous form submissions?

When concatenating and storing strings in PHP for continuous form submissions, it's best to use a database to store the data rather than relying on session variables. This ensures that the data is persistent and can be accessed even if the user navigates away from the page or closes the browser. Additionally, when concatenating strings, make sure to properly sanitize and validate the input to prevent any security vulnerabilities.

// Example of concatenating and storing strings in PHP using MySQL database

// Establish connection to database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Sanitize and validate input data
$data1 = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['data1']);
$data2 = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['data2']);

// Concatenate strings
$concatenatedData = $data1 . $data2;

// Store concatenated data in database
$sql = "INSERT INTO myTable (concatenated_data) VALUES ('$concatenatedData')";

if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
    echo "Data stored successfully";
} else {
    echo "Error: " . $sql . "<br>" . $conn->error;
}

// Close database connection
$conn->close();