What are the best practices for handling user input in PHP forms to prevent errors like incorrect password validation?

To prevent errors like incorrect password validation in PHP forms, it is important to properly sanitize and validate user input. This can be done by using functions like htmlspecialchars() to prevent XSS attacks and password_hash() to securely hash passwords. Additionally, implementing server-side validation and error handling can help ensure that only valid input is accepted.

// Sanitize and validate password input
$password = isset($_POST['password']) ? htmlspecialchars($_POST['password']) : '';
$hashed_password = password_hash($password, PASSWORD_DEFAULT);