What best practices should be followed when handling file uploads in PHP to prevent errors like "Das Dokument enthält keine Daten"?

When handling file uploads in PHP, it is important to ensure that the file is successfully uploaded before attempting to process it. One common error that occurs is "Das Dokument enthält keine Daten" (translated as "The document contains no data"), which can occur when trying to read an empty file. To prevent this error, you should check if the file is empty before processing it.

// Check if the file is not empty before processing
if ($_FILES['file']['size'] > 0) {
    // Process the file
    $file_contents = file_get_contents($_FILES['file']['tmp_name']);
    // Additional processing code here
} else {
    // Handle empty file error
    echo "Error: The file is empty";
}