What is the purpose of using hidden fields in a PHP form?

Hidden fields in a PHP form are used to store information that should not be visible or editable by the user, but still needs to be submitted along with the form data. This can be useful for passing along data that is needed for processing on the server side, such as user IDs or session tokens. 

```php
<input type="hidden" name="user_id" value="<?php echo $user_id; ?>">
```

In this example, the hidden field "user_id" is used to store the user's ID, which can then be accessed in the PHP script that processes the form submission.

Keywords

hidden fields PHP form data persistence server-side processing security

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