What are the potential pitfalls of including an entire PHP page using the include function?

Including an entire PHP page using the include function can lead to potential security vulnerabilities if the included file contains user input that is not properly sanitized. To prevent this, always ensure that any user input is properly validated and sanitized before including the file. 

// Example of including a file with proper input validation
$user_input = $_GET['page']; // Assuming the user input is the page to include
$allowed_pages = ['page1.php', 'page2.php']; // List of allowed pages

if (in_array($user_input, $allowed_pages)) {
    include $user_input;
} else {
    echo "Invalid page requested";
}

Keywords

include function PHP page security vulnerabilities code duplication performance impact

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