What best practices should be followed to avoid unexpected characters like question marks in URLs when using PHP?

To avoid unexpected characters like question marks in URLs when using PHP, it is important to properly encode any dynamic data that is being included in the URL. This can be achieved using the `urlencode()` function in PHP, which will encode special characters such as question marks, ampersands, and slashes. By encoding the data before appending it to the URL, you can ensure that the URL remains valid and does not contain any unexpected characters. 

$dynamicData = "example?data&here";
$encodedData = urlencode($dynamicData);
$url = "https://www.example.com/page.php?data=" . $encodedData;

echo $url;

Keywords

URL encoding htmlspecialchars filter_var validation sanitization

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