When working with form submissions in PHP, what are the common pitfalls to avoid to ensure proper functionality and data handling?

One common pitfall when working with form submissions in PHP is not properly sanitizing and validating user input. This can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To avoid this, always sanitize and validate user input before processing or storing it in the database. 

// Example of sanitizing and validating user input
$name = htmlspecialchars($_POST['name']);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

// Validate email format
if (!filter_var($email, FILTER_VALIDATE_EMAIL)) {
    // Handle invalid email address
}

Keywords

form submissions data handling PHP functions error handling validation

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