What are the common pitfalls in structuring PHP code for processing form data from an HTML file?

One common pitfall in structuring PHP code for processing form data from an HTML file is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To solve this issue, always use functions like htmlspecialchars() or mysqli_real_escape_string() to sanitize user input before processing it. 

// Example of sanitizing user input before processing form data
$name = htmlspecialchars($_POST['name']);
$email = htmlspecialchars($_POST['email']);

// Example of connecting to a database and using mysqli_real_escape_string
$conn = mysqli_connect($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);
$name = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['name']);
$email = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['email']);

Keywords

PHP form data HTML validation security

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