What best practices should be followed when interacting with a MongoDB database using PHP, especially in terms of data validation and sanitization?

When interacting with a MongoDB database using PHP, it is crucial to follow best practices for data validation and sanitization to prevent security vulnerabilities such as injection attacks. One way to achieve this is by using parameterized queries to ensure that user input is properly sanitized before being passed to the database.

// Connect to MongoDB
$manager = new MongoDB\Driver\Manager("mongodb://localhost:27017");

// User input
$userInput = $_POST['user_input'];

// Sanitize user input
$sanitizedInput = filter_var($userInput, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Prepare query
$filter = ['field' => $sanitizedInput];
$query = new MongoDB\Driver\Query($filter);

// Execute query
$cursor = $manager->executeQuery('database.collection', $query);

// Process results
foreach ($cursor as $document) {
    var_dump($document);
}