What are the best practices for validating form input before processing it in PHP scripts?

Validating form input before processing it in PHP scripts is crucial to ensure data integrity and security. To validate form input, you can use PHP functions like `filter_var()` and regular expressions to check for the correct format, length, and type of data. It's also recommended to sanitize the input data to prevent SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. 

// Example of validating form input in PHP
$name = $_POST['name'];

// Validate name field
if (empty($name)) {
    echo "Name is required";
} elseif (!preg_match("/^[a-zA-Z ]*$/", $name)) {
    echo "Only letters and white space allowed in name";
} else {
    // Process the validated input
    // Perform further actions here
}

Keywords

form validation PHP scripts input validation data sanitization error handling

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