What steps can be taken to ensure that form data is passed in UTF-8 encoding in PHP applications?

When handling form data in PHP applications, it's important to ensure that the data is passed in UTF-8 encoding to properly handle special characters and international text. One way to achieve this is by setting the form's accept-charset attribute to "UTF-8" and also setting the PHP default encoding to UTF-8 using the mb_internal_encoding() function.

// Set the form accept-charset attribute to UTF-8
<form accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post">
    <!-- form fields here -->
</form>

// Set PHP default encoding to UTF-8
<?php
mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");
?>