What are some potential security risks associated with executing functions based on user-defined input in PHP?

Executing functions based on user-defined input in PHP can lead to security risks such as code injection attacks, where malicious users can inject harmful code into the application. To mitigate this risk, it is essential to validate and sanitize user input before executing any functions. One way to achieve this is by using PHP's filter_input() function to sanitize input data and prevent code injection.

$user_input = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'user_input', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
if ($user_input) {
    // execute function based on sanitized user input
} else {
    // handle invalid input
}