What are the best practices for handling form input values in PHP to prevent errors and improve security?

When handling form input values in PHP, it is important to sanitize and validate the data to prevent errors and improve security. This can be done by using functions like htmlspecialchars() to prevent cross-site scripting attacks, and filter_input() to validate input data. Additionally, using prepared statements when interacting with databases can help prevent SQL injection attacks. 

// Sanitize input data using htmlspecialchars()
$name = htmlspecialchars($_POST['name']);
$email = htmlspecialchars($_POST['email']);

// Validate input data using filter_input()
$age = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'age', FILTER_VALIDATE_INT);

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

Keywords

validation sanitization htmlspecialchars SQL injection CSRF protection

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