What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of using a Textarea for input in PHP applications?

Using a Textarea for input in PHP applications allows users to input large amounts of text, making it suitable for comments, messages, or other lengthy content. However, it may also increase the risk of SQL injection attacks if the input is not properly sanitized and validated before being inserted into a database.

// Sanitize and validate input from a Textarea field
$input_text = $_POST['textarea_input'];
$clean_text = filter_var($input_text, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Validate if the input is not empty
if(!empty($clean_text)) {
    // Proceed with inserting the sanitized input into the database
} else {
    // Handle empty input error
}