What are best practices for handling user input in PHP to prevent errors?

When handling user input in PHP, it is crucial to sanitize and validate the data to prevent errors and security vulnerabilities. One common best practice is to use functions like htmlspecialchars() to prevent XSS attacks and filter_input() to sanitize input. Additionally, using prepared statements when interacting with databases can help prevent SQL injection attacks. 

// Sanitize user input using htmlspecialchars()
$user_input = htmlspecialchars($_POST['user_input']);

// Validate user input using filter_input()
$user_email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'user_email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Use prepared statements to interact with databases
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $user_input);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

validation sanitization htmlspecialchars filter_input error handling

Related Questions