What are the best practices for handling form validation in PHP to ensure data integrity?

When handling form validation in PHP, it is important to ensure data integrity by sanitizing and validating user input. This can be achieved by using PHP functions like filter_var() and htmlentities() to clean and validate input data before processing it further. Additionally, implementing server-side validation rules and error handling can help prevent malicious attacks and ensure that only valid data is accepted.

// Example of form validation in PHP to ensure data integrity

// Sanitize and validate input data
$name = filter_var($_POST['name'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Check if required fields are not empty
if(empty($name) || empty($email)) {
    echo "Please fill in all required fields.";
} else {
    // Process the validated data further
    // Additional validation and processing logic here
}