What are the best practices for handling form data sent from PayPal in PHP, especially when certain variables are not being returned?

When handling form data sent from PayPal in PHP, it's important to sanitize and validate the input to prevent any security vulnerabilities. If certain variables are not being returned, it's best to check for their existence before trying to access them to avoid errors. One way to handle this is by using conditional statements or setting default values for missing variables.

// Example of handling form data sent from PayPal in PHP

// Check if the required variables are set before accessing them
if(isset($_POST['item_name']) && isset($_POST['item_price'])) {
    $item_name = $_POST['item_name'];
    $item_price = $_POST['item_price'];

    // Process the form data
    // ...
} else {
    // Handle missing variables or show an error message
    echo "Error: Missing required form data";
}