What are some best practices for handling form submissions and calculations in PHP to avoid errors and improve functionality?

When handling form submissions and calculations in PHP, it is important to properly sanitize and validate user input to prevent security vulnerabilities and errors. Additionally, using functions to perform calculations and separating form handling logic from display logic can improve code readability and maintainability.

// Example of handling form submission and calculation in PHP

// Sanitize and validate user input
$input_value = isset($_POST['input_value']) ? filter_var($_POST['input_value'], FILTER_SANITIZE_NUMBER_INT) : 0;

// Perform calculation
$result = $input_value * 2;

// Display result
echo "The result of the calculation is: " . $result;