What best practices should be followed when defining and manipulating PHP variables in a script that interacts with external services?

When defining and manipulating PHP variables in a script that interacts with external services, it is important to sanitize and validate user input to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. Additionally, it is recommended to use proper error handling techniques to gracefully handle any errors that may occur during the interaction with external services. Lastly, make sure to securely store any sensitive information such as API keys or passwords to avoid exposing them in the code. 

// Example of sanitizing and validating user input
$userInput = $_POST['user_input'];
$cleanInput = filter_var($userInput, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Example of error handling
try {
    // Code to interact with external service
} catch (Exception $e) {
    // Handle the error gracefully
    echo "An error occurred: " . $e->getMessage();
}

// Example of securely storing sensitive information
define('API_KEY', 'your_api_key_here');

Keywords

data validation error handling API integration secure coding variable scoping

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