What best practices can be implemented to ensure consistent handling of case sensitivity in PHP database operations?

When working with databases in PHP, it is important to ensure consistent handling of case sensitivity to avoid unexpected behavior. One way to achieve this is by setting the collation of the database tables to be case-insensitive. This can be done during table creation or by altering the table's collation using SQL queries.

// Example of setting the collation of a table to be case-insensitive
$sql = "ALTER TABLE table_name CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $sql);

if($result) {
    echo "Collation set to case-insensitive successfully.";
} else {
    echo "Error setting collation: " . mysqli_error($conn);
}