What are the best practices for storing and retrieving form data in PHP sessions?

When storing form data in PHP sessions, it is important to sanitize and validate the input data before saving it to the session to prevent security vulnerabilities. Additionally, it is recommended to use session variables with clear and descriptive names to easily retrieve the data later. To retrieve the form data from the session, you can simply access the session variables using the $_SESSION superglobal array.

// Storing form data in PHP session
session_start();

// Sanitize and validate input data
$form_data = [
    'name' => filter_var($_POST['name'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING),
    'email' => filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL),
    // Add more form fields as needed
];

// Save form data to session
$_SESSION['form_data'] = $form_data;

// Retrieving form data from session
session_start();

// Access the form data from session
if(isset($_SESSION['form_data'])){
    $name = $_SESSION['form_data']['name'];
    $email = $_SESSION['form_data']['email'];
    // Retrieve more form fields as needed
}