Are there any common pitfalls to avoid when implementing a search function in PHP?

One common pitfall to avoid when implementing a search function in PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries when interacting with your database. 

// Example of using prepared statements to avoid SQL injection
$searchTerm = $_GET['search_term'];
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM products WHERE name LIKE :searchTerm");
$stmt->execute(['searchTerm' => "%$searchTerm%"]);
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();

Keywords

SQL injection XSS attacks full-text search pagination error handling

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