How can placeholders be effectively used in PHP code for better readability and understanding?

Using placeholders in PHP code can improve readability and understanding by clearly indicating where dynamic values should be inserted. This can make the code easier to maintain and update, as well as help prevent SQL injection attacks when working with databases. Placeholders can be effectively used with prepared statements in PDO or mysqli to safely bind parameters to SQL queries.

// Example using PDO prepared statement with placeholders
$pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase", "username", "password");
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();