What role does the strtolower function play in PHP when dealing with case sensitivity in database searches?

When dealing with case sensitivity in database searches in PHP, the strtolower function can be used to convert all characters in a string to lowercase. This can help ensure that case differences do not affect search results when querying a database.

$searchTerm = "SearchTerm";
$searchTerm = strtolower($searchTerm);

// Use $searchTerm in database query to ensure case insensitivity