What are common beginner mistakes when working with PHP forms?

One common beginner mistake when working with PHP forms is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities like SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To solve this issue, always use functions like htmlspecialchars() or mysqli_real_escape_string() to sanitize user input before using it in your application. 

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

// Sanitize user input using mysqli_real_escape_string()
$conn = mysqli_connect("localhost", "username", "password", "database");
$name = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['name']);
$email = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['email']);

Keywords

validation sanitization XSS attacks form submission error handling

Related Questions