How can the use of Prepared Statements or Escaping help improve PHP code security?

Using Prepared Statements or Escaping can help improve PHP code security by preventing SQL injection attacks. Prepared Statements allow for the separation of SQL code from user input, reducing the risk of malicious SQL injections. Escaping input data can also help by encoding special characters that could be used for SQL injection, making it safe to include user input in SQL queries.

// Using Prepared Statements
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();

// Using Escaping
$username = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $username);
$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '$username'";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $query);