What are the potential pitfalls of using PHP to handle text files in web development projects?

One potential pitfall of using PHP to handle text files in web development projects is the risk of security vulnerabilities such as code injection or file manipulation. To mitigate this risk, it is important to sanitize user input and validate file paths before processing them in PHP. 

// Sanitize user input and validate file paths before processing
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];

// Sanitize user input
$sanitized_input = filter_var($user_input, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Validate file path
if (strpos($sanitized_input, '../') === false) {
    $file_path = 'path/to/files/' . $sanitized_input;

    // Process the file
    $file_contents = file_get_contents($file_path);
    echo $file_contents;
} else {
    echo "Invalid file path";
}

Keywords

file handling PHP text files error handling security vulnerabilities

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