What are some best practices for handling HTML output in PHP to ensure proper functionality and avoid errors?
When outputting HTML in PHP, it is important to properly escape any user input to prevent cross-site scripting attacks and ensure the HTML is rendered correctly. One way to achieve this is by using the htmlspecialchars() function to encode special characters in the output.
<?php
// Example of handling HTML output in PHP
$user_input = "<script>alert('XSS attack!');</script>";
echo htmlspecialchars($user_input, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
?>