What are common pitfalls when creating contact forms in PHP, and how can they be avoided?
One common pitfall when creating contact forms in PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To avoid this, always use functions like htmlspecialchars() or mysqli_real_escape_string() to sanitize user input before using it in SQL queries or displaying it on the page.
// Sanitize user input using htmlspecialchars() before displaying it
$name = htmlspecialchars($_POST['name']);
$email = htmlspecialchars($_POST['email']);
$message = htmlspecialchars($_POST['message']);
// Sanitize user input using mysqli_real_escape_string() before using it in SQL queries
$name = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['name']);
$email = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['email']);
$message = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['message']);