In the context of PHP development, what are the common pitfalls to avoid when integrating PHP code with HTML forms for user input and database interactions?

One common pitfall to avoid when integrating PHP code with HTML forms is not properly sanitizing user input before using it in database queries. This can lead to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries to interact with the database.

// Example of using prepared statements to interact with the database
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');

$stmt = $pdo->prepare('INSERT INTO users (username, email) VALUES (:username, :email)');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $_POST['username']);
$stmt->bindParam(':email', $_POST['email']);
$stmt->execute();