How can using prepared statements with mysqli or PDO improve security in PHP database operations?

Using prepared statements with mysqli or PDO in PHP database operations can improve security by automatically escaping user input, preventing SQL injection attacks. Prepared statements separate SQL code from user input, making it impossible for malicious input to be interpreted as part of the SQL query. This significantly reduces the risk of attackers manipulating SQL queries to access, modify, or delete sensitive data in the database.

// Using prepared statements with PDO
$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();

// Using prepared statements with mysqli
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "mydatabase");

$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?");
$stmt->bind_param('s', $username);
$stmt->execute();