What are best practices for handling form data in PHP to prevent security vulnerabilities?

To prevent security vulnerabilities when handling form data in PHP, it is important to sanitize and validate user input to prevent SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and other attacks. Use prepared statements when interacting with a database to prevent SQL injection. Additionally, validate and sanitize all input data to ensure it meets the expected format and content. 

// Example of sanitizing and validating form data in PHP
$name = filter_var($_POST['name'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES (:name, :email)");
$stmt->bindParam(':name', $name);
$stmt->bindParam(':email', $email);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

SQL injection Cross-site scripting htmlspecialchars prepared statements validation

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