What are best practices for handling form submissions and displaying success messages in PHP applications?

When handling form submissions in PHP applications, it is important to validate the input data, process the form submission, and display appropriate success messages to the user. To do this, you can use PHP's built-in functions for form handling and validation, as well as session variables to store and display success messages.

<?php
session_start();

// Check if the form is submitted
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
    // Validate input data
    $name = $_POST['name'];
    $email = $_POST['email'];
    
    // Process form submission
    // Your processing logic here
    
    // Set success message
    $_SESSION['success_message'] = "Form submitted successfully!";
    
    // Redirect to prevent form resubmission
    header("Location: /success.php");
    exit();
}
?>

<!-- Display success message in HTML -->
<?php if(isset($_SESSION['success_message'])): ?>
    <div class="success-message"><?php echo $_SESSION['success_message']; ?></div>
    <?php unset($_SESSION['success_message']); ?>
<?php endif; ?>