Are there any common pitfalls or mistakes that beginners should be aware of when working with PHP and MySQL?
One common pitfall for beginners when working with PHP and MySQL is not properly sanitizing user input before using it in database queries. This can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries to securely interact with your database.
// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();