What are some best practices for handling form validation in PHP scripts?

When handling form validation in PHP scripts, it is important to validate user input to ensure data integrity and security. Some best practices include using server-side validation, sanitizing input data, and displaying clear error messages to users. 

// Example of handling form validation in PHP script

// Check if form is submitted
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
    
    // Validate input data
    $name = $_POST["name"];
    $email = $_POST["email"];
    
    if (empty($name) || empty($email)) {
        $error = "Please fill out all fields.";
    } else {
        // Sanitize input data
        $name = filter_var($name, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
        $email = filter_var($email, FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);
        
        // Additional validation logic for email format
        if (!filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
            $error = "Invalid email format.";
        } else {
            // Process form data
            // ...
        }
    }
}

// Display error message if exists
if (isset($error)) {
    echo $error;
}

Keywords

Form validation PHP scripts Sanitization Regular expressions Error handling

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