What are the best practices for handling user input in PHP forms to prevent malicious attacks?

To prevent malicious attacks on PHP forms, it is essential to sanitize and validate user input. This can be done by using functions like htmlspecialchars() to prevent cross-site scripting attacks and filter_input() to validate input data. Additionally, implementing CSRF tokens and input validation rules can further enhance the security of PHP forms. 

// Sanitize and validate user input
$name = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'name', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Prevent cross-site scripting attacks
$message = htmlspecialchars($_POST['message']);

// Implement CSRF tokens
session_start();
$token = md5(uniqid(rand(), true));
$_SESSION['csrf_token'] = $token;

// Input validation rules
if (empty($name) || empty($email) || empty($message)) {
    // Handle validation errors
} else {
    // Process form data
}

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting (XSS) htmlspecialchars prepared statements validation

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