What are common pitfalls when using PHP contact forms and how can they be avoided?

Common pitfalls when using PHP contact forms include not properly sanitizing user input, not validating input data, and not handling errors effectively. To avoid these pitfalls, always sanitize and validate user input to prevent SQL injection and other security vulnerabilities, and implement error handling to provide informative error messages to users. 

// Sanitize user input
$name = filter_var($_POST['name'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
$message = filter_var($_POST['message'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Validate input data
if (empty($name) || empty($email) || empty($message)) {
    // Handle validation errors
    echo "Please fill out all fields.";
} else {
    // Process the form data
    // Additional code for sending the email or storing data in a database
}

Keywords

SQL injection form validation CSRF protection email headers error handling

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