What are some best practices for handling AJAX requests in PHP, especially when passing additional variables?

When handling AJAX requests in PHP, especially when passing additional variables, it is important to properly sanitize and validate the input data to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. One common best practice is to use the $_POST or $_GET superglobals to retrieve the data sent from the client-side, and then sanitize and validate the input before processing it further.

// Example of handling an AJAX request in PHP with additional variables

// Retrieve the additional variables sent via AJAX
$variable1 = isset($_POST['variable1']) ? $_POST['variable1'] : '';
$variable2 = isset($_POST['variable2']) ? $_POST['variable2'] : '';

// Sanitize and validate the input data
$variable1 = filter_var($variable1, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$variable2 = filter_var($variable2, FILTER_VALIDATE_INT);

// Process the data further
// Your code logic here