What best practices should be followed when handling user agent strings in PHP?

When handling user agent strings in PHP, it is important to properly sanitize and validate the input to prevent any potential security risks such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. One best practice is to use a library or function specifically designed for parsing user agent strings, such as the get_browser() function in PHP. Additionally, it is recommended to store user agent strings securely and avoid displaying them directly to users to prevent information leakage. 

// Example of using get_browser() function to handle user agent strings
$user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
$browser_info = get_browser($user_agent, true);

// Output the browser information
echo "Browser: " . $browser_info['browser'] . "<br>";
echo "Version: " . $browser_info['version'] . "<br>";
echo "Platform: " . $browser_info['platform'] . "<br>";

Keywords

user agent strings PHP security validation sanitization

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