What are the potential pitfalls of including external files in PHP, and how can they be mitigated?

Potential pitfalls of including external files in PHP include security vulnerabilities such as code injection, file inclusion vulnerabilities, and unintended variable overwriting. To mitigate these risks, it is important to validate and sanitize user input, use absolute file paths instead of relative paths, and avoid using user input directly in include statements. 

// Example of including external files in PHP with mitigations for potential pitfalls

// Validate and sanitize user input before using it in include statement
$filename = filter_input(INPUT_GET, 'file', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$filepath = 'path/to/includes/' . $filename . '.php';

// Use absolute file paths instead of relative paths
if (file_exists($filepath)) {
    include $filepath;
} else {
    echo 'File not found';
}

Keywords

include require security vulnerability mitigation

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