What is the best practice for defining variables in PHP upon first call to avoid undefined variable errors?

When defining variables in PHP, it is important to initialize them with a default value to avoid undefined variable errors upon first call. One common practice is to use the null coalescing operator (??) to assign a default value if the variable is not set. This ensures that the variable is defined and prevents any errors from occurring.

// Example of defining variables with default values using the null coalescing operator
$variable1 = $_POST['variable1'] ?? '';
$variable2 = $_POST['variable2'] ?? 0;
$variable3 = $_POST['variable3'] ?? [];