What are some best practices for handling HTTP requests and responses in PHP scripts?

When handling HTTP requests and responses in PHP scripts, it is important to properly sanitize and validate input data to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. Additionally, it is recommended to use built-in PHP functions like `filter_var` or `htmlspecialchars` to sanitize input data and `json_encode` or `json_decode` to handle JSON data. Finally, always set appropriate HTTP headers to ensure proper communication between the client and server.

// Example of sanitizing input data using filter_var
$input = filter_var($_POST['input'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Example of encoding data to JSON format
$data = ['key' => 'value'];
$jsonData = json_encode($data);

// Example of setting HTTP headers
header('Content-Type: application/json');