What are the best practices for handling IP addresses and ports in PHP scripts intended for web servers?

When handling IP addresses and ports in PHP scripts intended for web servers, it is important to validate and sanitize user input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as injection attacks. Additionally, it is recommended to use built-in PHP functions for handling IP addresses and ports to ensure proper formatting and validation.

// Example of validating and sanitizing IP address and port input
$ip = filter_var($_POST['ip'], FILTER_VALIDATE_IP);
$port = filter_var($_POST['port'], FILTER_VALIDATE_INT);

if ($ip && $port) {
    // Proceed with using the validated IP address and port
} else {
    // Handle invalid input error
}