What are best practices for handling user input validation in PHP to prevent errors like "You must fill in all fields"?

When handling user input validation in PHP to prevent errors like "You must fill in all fields", it is important to check that all required fields are not empty before processing the form data. You can achieve this by using conditional statements to validate each input field and display an error message if any required field is empty.

// Check if form is submitted
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
    // Check if required fields are empty
    if (empty($_POST["field1"]) || empty($_POST["field2"]) || empty($_POST["field3"])) {
        $error_message = "You must fill in all fields.";
    } else {
        // Process form data
        $field1 = $_POST["field1"];
        $field2 = $_POST["field2"];
        $field3 = $_POST["field3"];
        
        // Additional validation and processing here
    }
}