What best practices should be followed when handling form data in PHP for database insertion?

When handling form data in PHP for database insertion, it is important to sanitize and validate the input to prevent SQL injection and other security vulnerabilities. One best practice is to use prepared statements with parameterized queries to securely insert data into the database.

// Assuming $conn is the database connection object

// Sanitize and validate form data
$name = filter_var($_POST['name'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL);

// Prepare the SQL statement with parameterized query
$stmt = $conn->prepare("INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES (?, ?)");
$stmt->bind_param("ss", $name, $email);

// Execute the statement
$stmt->execute();

// Close the statement and database connection
$stmt->close();
$conn->close();