What are best practices for handling unmarked selections in multiple select boxes when submitting data to PHP?

When handling unmarked selections in multiple select boxes in PHP, it is important to ensure that the data is properly sanitized and validated before processing it. One common approach is to check if the selected values are empty or null, and handle them accordingly in the PHP code.

// Retrieve selected values from the multiple select box
$selectedValues = $_POST['select_box'] ?? [];

// Check if any values were selected
if (!empty($selectedValues)) {
    // Process the selected values
    foreach ($selectedValues as $value) {
        // Perform necessary operations with each selected value
    }
} else {
    // Handle the case where no values were selected
    // For example, display an error message or set a default value
}