What are some best practices for handling user input and preferences in PHP applications to avoid errors like the one described in the forum thread?

Issue: To avoid errors like the one described in the forum thread when handling user input and preferences in PHP applications, it is crucial to properly sanitize and validate user input to prevent SQL injection attacks and other security vulnerabilities. Code snippet: 

// Sanitize and validate user input
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Check if input is valid
if ($username && $email) {
    // Proceed with processing user input
    // For example, insert data into database
} else {
    // Handle invalid input (e.g., display error message)
}

Keywords

validation sanitization htmlspecialchars prepared statements input filtering

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