What best practices should be followed when using AJAX to update content on a PHP website?

When using AJAX to update content on a PHP website, it is important to ensure that the data being sent and received is properly sanitized and validated to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. Additionally, it is recommended to use prepared statements when interacting with a database to further protect against SQL injection. Lastly, consider implementing CSRF tokens to prevent cross-site request forgery attacks. 

// Example of sanitizing and validating data before updating content using AJAX

// Sanitize and validate input data
$user_input = filter_input(INPUT_POST, 'user_input', FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Check if input data is not empty
if(!empty($user_input)){
    // Update content in the database
    // Use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
    $stmt = $pdo->prepare("UPDATE content SET data = :data WHERE id = :id");
    $stmt->bindParam(':data', $user_input);
    $stmt->bindParam(':id', $content_id);
    $stmt->execute();
    
    // Return success message
    echo json_encode(['status' => 'success', 'message' => 'Content updated successfully']);
} else {
    // Return error message if input data is empty
    echo json_encode(['status' => 'error', 'message' => 'Input data is empty']);
}

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