What best practices should be followed when handling UTF-8 encoding and special characters in PHP for web development?

When handling UTF-8 encoding and special characters in PHP for web development, it is important to ensure that your PHP files are saved with UTF-8 encoding, set the correct charset in the HTML meta tag, and use functions like mb_internal_encoding() and mb_convert_encoding() to properly handle UTF-8 strings. Additionally, always sanitize user input to prevent security vulnerabilities related to special characters. 

// Set UTF-8 encoding
mb_internal_encoding('UTF-8');

// Convert input to UTF-8
$input = $_POST['input'];
$utf8_input = mb_convert_encoding($input, 'UTF-8', 'auto');

// Sanitize input
$clean_input = htmlspecialchars($utf8_input, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8');

// Output sanitized input
echo $clean_input;

Keywords

UTF-8 special characters encoding PHP web development

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