What are the best practices for handling form submissions in PHP to ensure functionality?

When handling form submissions in PHP, it is important to validate user input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. Additionally, it is crucial to sanitize input data to ensure that only the expected data types are accepted. Finally, always use prepared statements when interacting with a database to prevent SQL injection. 

<?php
// Validate and sanitize form input
$name = isset($_POST['name']) ? htmlspecialchars($_POST['name']) : '';
$email = isset($_POST['email']) ? filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL) : '';
$message = isset($_POST['message']) ? htmlspecialchars($_POST['message']) : '';

// Use prepared statements to interact with the database
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO form_data (name, email, message) VALUES (:name, :email, :message)");
$stmt->bindParam(':name', $name);
$stmt->bindParam(':email', $email);
$stmt->bindParam(':message', $message);
$stmt->execute();
?>

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