What best practice recommendations can be suggested for improving the handling of form data transfer between PHP files in the given code?

The issue with the current code is that it directly accesses form data using $_POST in the action file without any validation or sanitization. To improve this, it is recommended to sanitize and validate the form data before using it in the PHP files to prevent security vulnerabilities and ensure data integrity.

// Sanitize and validate form data before using it
$username = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'username', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Check if form data is valid
if ($username && $email) {
    // Process the form data
    // Your code here
} else {
    // Handle invalid form data
    echo "Invalid form data. Please check your input.";
}