What are some best practices for securely passing sensitive information, such as primary keys, between PHP pages?

When passing sensitive information like primary keys between PHP pages, it is important to use secure methods to prevent data breaches. One best practice is to use PHP sessions to store and retrieve the sensitive information securely. By storing the primary key in a session variable, you can ensure that it is not exposed in the URL or form data.

// Start the session
session_start();

// Store the primary key in a session variable
$_SESSION['user_id'] = $user_id;

// Retrieve the primary key from the session on the next page
$user_id = $_SESSION['user_id'];

// Unset the session variable after use
unset($_SESSION['user_id']);