What are some best practices for handling form data output with PHP?

When handling form data output with PHP, it is important to sanitize and validate the input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. One best practice is to use PHP functions like htmlspecialchars() to escape special characters in the output. Additionally, it is recommended to use prepared statements when interacting with a database to prevent SQL injection.

// Example of handling form data output with PHP
$input = $_POST['input']; // Assuming 'input' is the name of the form field

// Sanitize the input using htmlspecialchars
$sanitized_input = htmlspecialchars($input);

// Output the sanitized input
echo $sanitized_input;