What best practices should be followed when handling data output in PHP?

When handling data output in PHP, it is important to properly sanitize and validate the data to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. One best practice is to use PHP's built-in functions like htmlentities() or htmlspecialchars() to escape special characters in the output data. Additionally, always validate user input before displaying it to ensure it meets the expected format. 

// Example of sanitizing and validating data output in PHP
$userInput = "<script>alert('XSS attack!');</script>";
$validatedInput = htmlspecialchars($userInput, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');
echo $validatedInput;

Keywords

data validation XSS prevention htmlspecialchars output buffering secure coding practices

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