What are some best practices for handling user input in PHP without using MySQL?

When handling user input in PHP without using MySQL, it is important to sanitize and validate the input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection attacks. One way to do this is by using PHP's filter_var() function to filter the input data based on the expected data type or format.

// Sanitize and validate user input in PHP
$user_input = $_POST['user_input']; // Assuming user input is received via POST method

// Sanitize the user input
$sanitized_input = filter_var($user_input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Validate the sanitized input
if ($sanitized_input !== false) {
    // Process the sanitized input
    echo "Sanitized input: " . $sanitized_input;
} else {
    // Handle validation errors
    echo "Invalid input";
}