What are the best practices for handling $_POST variables securely in PHP?

When handling $_POST variables securely in PHP, it is important to sanitize and validate the input data to prevent SQL injection, XSS attacks, and other security vulnerabilities. One way to achieve this is by using functions like filter_input() or filter_var() to sanitize the input data. Additionally, always use prepared statements when interacting with a database to prevent SQL injection attacks. 

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

// Use prepared statements to interact with the database
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('INSERT INTO users (username, email) VALUES (:username, :email)');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->bindParam(':email', $email);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

filter_input htmlspecialchars prepared statements CSRF protection input validation

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