What are some best practices for handling sessions in PHP when developing an online shop system?

When developing an online shop system in PHP, it is crucial to handle sessions securely to maintain user authentication and shopping cart data. One best practice is to regenerate the session ID after a successful login to prevent session fixation attacks. Additionally, always validate and sanitize user input to prevent session hijacking.

// Start the session
session_start();

// Regenerate session ID after successful login
if ($successful_login) {
    session_regenerate_id(true);
}

// Validate and sanitize user input
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$password = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'password', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
// Perform authentication and set session variables