What are some best practices for accessing and manipulating form data in PHP?

When accessing and manipulating form data in PHP, it is important to properly sanitize and validate user input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. One best practice is to use the $_POST superglobal array to access form data submitted via the POST method, and the $_GET superglobal array for data submitted via the GET method. Additionally, it is recommended to use functions like filter_input() or filter_var() to sanitize and validate user input. 

// Accessing form data submitted via POST method
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
    $username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
    $password = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'password', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
    
    // Perform further validation and manipulation of form data
}

Keywords

$_POST $_GET filter_input htmlspecialchars validation

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