What are some common pitfalls to avoid when working with form data and processing it in PHP, based on the examples provided in the forum thread?

One common pitfall is not properly sanitizing user input before processing it, which can lead to security vulnerabilities like SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To avoid this, always use functions like `htmlspecialchars()` or `mysqli_real_escape_string()` to sanitize user input before using it in queries or displaying it on the page. 

// Example of sanitizing user input before using it in a query
$userInput = $_POST['user_input'];
$cleanInput = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $userInput);

// Now you can safely use $cleanInput in your query
$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '$cleanInput'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

Keywords

SQL injection XSS attacks form validation htmlspecialchars CSRF protection

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