What best practices should be followed when handling user input in PHP scripts to prevent empty or malicious submissions?

When handling user input in PHP scripts, it is essential to validate and sanitize the input to prevent empty or malicious submissions. One best practice is to use functions like `isset()` or `empty()` to check if the input is not empty before processing it. Additionally, you can use functions like `htmlspecialchars()` or `mysqli_real_escape_string()` to sanitize the input and prevent SQL injection attacks. 

// Example code snippet to handle user input in PHP
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];

// Check if the input is not empty
if(isset($user_input) && !empty($user_input)){
    // Sanitize the input to prevent SQL injection
    $sanitized_input = htmlspecialchars(mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $user_input));
    
    // Process the sanitized input
    // ...
} else {
    // Handle empty input
    // ...
}

Keywords

Sanitize Validation Filter_var htmlspecialchars Prepared statements

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