What role do HTTP methods like POST and GET play in transferring data from HTML forms to PHP scripts for database operations?

HTTP methods like POST and GET play a crucial role in transferring data from HTML forms to PHP scripts for database operations. POST method is commonly used for sending sensitive data like passwords, while GET method is used for non-sensitive data. To process form data in PHP, we need to access the data sent by the form using $_POST or $_GET superglobals.

// Sample PHP script to process form data using POST method
if ($_SERVER["REQUEST_METHOD"] == "POST") {
    $username = $_POST['username'];
    $password = $_POST['password'];

    // Perform database operations using $username and $password
}