What best practices should be followed when handling form submissions in PHP to prevent errors like missing mandatory fields?

When handling form submissions in PHP, it is essential to validate the input data to prevent errors like missing mandatory fields. One best practice is to check if the required fields are set and not empty before processing the form data. This can be done by using conditional statements to ensure that all mandatory fields are filled out before proceeding with the form submission.

// Check if mandatory fields are set and not empty
if(isset($_POST['field1']) && !empty($_POST['field1']) && isset($_POST['field2']) && !empty($_POST['field2'])) {
    // Process form data
    $field1 = $_POST['field1'];
    $field2 = $_POST['field2'];
    
    // Additional processing logic here
} else {
    // Display error message or redirect back to the form page
    echo "Please fill out all mandatory fields.";
}