What are some best practices for assigning values to variables based on user input in PHP forms?

When assigning values to variables based on user input in PHP forms, 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's filter_input function to retrieve and sanitize user input. Additionally, it is recommended to use conditional statements to check if the input is valid before assigning it to a variable. 

// Retrieve and sanitize user input using filter_input
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Check if the input is valid before assigning it to a variable
if ($username && $email) {
    // Assign values to variables
    $username = $_POST['username'];
    $email = $_POST['email'];
} else {
    // Handle invalid input
    echo "Invalid input";
}

Keywords

sanitize validation $_POST htmlspecialchars filter_var

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