What are the best practices for securing user input in PHP forms?

Securing user input in PHP forms is crucial to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. One of the best practices is to use PHP's built-in functions like htmlspecialchars() to escape user input before displaying it on the webpage. Additionally, validating user input against expected formats and using prepared statements for database queries can further enhance security. 

// Example of securing user input in PHP form
$userInput = $_POST['user_input'];

// Escape user input before displaying it on the webpage
$escapedInput = htmlspecialchars($userInput);

// Validate user input against expected formats
if (filter_var($userInput, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    // User input is a valid email address
}

// Use prepared statements for database queries
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $userInput);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

SQL injection XSS attacks htmlspecialchars validation prepared statements

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