What best practices should be followed when including PHP files with variables in a CMS environment?

When including PHP files with variables in a CMS environment, it is important to properly sanitize and validate the variables to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. One best practice is to use PHP's built-in functions like htmlspecialchars() to escape output before displaying it. Additionally, avoid including files with user input directly without proper validation.

// Example of including a PHP file with variables in a CMS environment
$variable = $_GET['variable']; // Get the variable from user input
$validated_variable = htmlspecialchars($variable); // Sanitize the variable

include('file.php'); // Include the PHP file with the sanitized variable