What are the best practices for handling form input data in PHP to avoid errors and improve code readability?

When handling form input data in PHP, it is important to sanitize and validate the data to prevent errors and improve code readability. One way to do this is by using PHP's filter_input function to filter the input data based on the type of input expected (e.g., string, integer, email). Additionally, you can use functions like htmlspecialchars to prevent XSS attacks by escaping special characters in the input data. 

// Sanitize and validate form input data
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Prevent XSS attacks by escaping special characters
$username = htmlspecialchars($username);
$email = htmlspecialchars($email);

Keywords

Sanitization Validation htmlspecialchars filter_var error handling

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