How can PHP beginners avoid common pitfalls when working with database queries?

Beginners can avoid common pitfalls when working with database queries in PHP by using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection attacks, properly handling errors to debug issues, and sanitizing input data to ensure data integrity. 

// Example of using prepared statements to avoid SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();
```

```php
// Example of error handling to debug database query issues
try {
    $stmt = $pdo->query("SELECT * FROM users");
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage();
}
```

```php
// Example of sanitizing input data to ensure data integrity
$username = filter_var($_POST['username'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

Keywords

SQL injection PDO prepared statements error handling data validation

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