What are the best practices for securely storing and accessing user IDs in PHP applications?

When storing and accessing user IDs in PHP applications, it is important to securely handle this sensitive information to prevent unauthorized access or data breaches. One best practice is to use PHP's built-in session handling functions to store and retrieve user IDs securely. By using sessions, the user ID is stored on the server side and only a session ID is passed to the client, reducing the risk of exposing user IDs in URLs or forms. 

// Start a session
session_start();

// Set the user ID in the session
$_SESSION['user_id'] = $user_id;

// Retrieve the user ID from the session
$user_id = $_SESSION['user_id'];

Keywords

password_hash password_verify encryption secure session handling SQL injection

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