What are the best practices for avoiding duplicate posts in a PHP forum thread?

Duplicate posts in a PHP forum thread can be avoided by implementing a check to see if the same post content has already been submitted by the user before allowing it to be posted. This can be achieved by comparing the new post content with existing posts in the database to prevent duplicates. 

// Check if the post content already exists in the database
$existing_post = $db->query("SELECT * FROM posts WHERE content = '$new_post_content'");

if($existing_post->num_rows == 0){
    // Insert the new post into the database
    $db->query("INSERT INTO posts (content, user_id) VALUES ('$new_post_content', '$user_id')");
    echo "Post successfully submitted!";
} else {
    echo "This post already exists in the forum.";
}

Keywords

PHP forum duplicate posts thread prevention

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