What best practices should be followed when handling form data in PHP scripts to prevent errors like the one mentioned in the forum thread?

To prevent errors when handling form data in PHP scripts, it is essential to validate and sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection, XSS attacks, and other security vulnerabilities. One common best practice is to use PHP functions like filter_input() or htmlspecialchars() to sanitize user input before processing it in the script. 

// Example of validating and sanitizing form data in PHP script
$name = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'name', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'email', FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Using htmlspecialchars() to prevent XSS attacks
$message = htmlspecialchars($_POST['message']);

// Now you can safely use $name, $email, and $message in your script

Keywords

sanitization validation htmlspecialchars mysqli_real_escape_string CSRF protection

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