In what scenarios should developers consider using conditional statements like "if ($this->SearchString)" to concatenate query strings in PHP, and what precautions should be taken to prevent unintended characters in the output?

When developers need to concatenate query strings in PHP based on certain conditions, they should use conditional statements like "if ($this->SearchString)" to ensure that the query string is only added when the condition is met. To prevent unintended characters in the output, developers should sanitize and validate the input data before concatenating it into the query string. 

$queryString = '';

if ($this->SearchString) {
    $searchString = sanitize_input($this->SearchString);
    $queryString .= " WHERE column_name = '$searchString'";
}

// Rest of the query building code

Keywords

conditional statements query strings PHP concatenation unintended characters

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