Why is it important to sanitize and validate user input in PHP, and what are the best practices for doing so in the given code snippet?
It is important to sanitize and validate user input in PHP to prevent security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting attacks. Best practices for sanitizing user input include using functions like htmlspecialchars() to prevent XSS attacks and validating input using functions like filter_var() with appropriate filters.
// Sanitize and validate user input for email address
$email = isset($_POST['email']) ? filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL) : '';
// Sanitize and validate user input for password
$password = isset($_POST['password']) ? htmlspecialchars($_POST['password']) : '';