What are common errors that may arise when using HTML dropdowns and PHP to filter content on a webpage?

One common error that may arise when using HTML dropdowns and PHP to filter content on a webpage is not properly handling user input. This can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always sanitize and validate user input before using it in SQL queries.

// Sanitize and validate user input before using it in SQL queries
$filter = isset($_POST['filter']) ? $_POST['filter'] : '';
$filtered_value = filter_var($filter, FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM table WHERE column = :filtered_value");
$stmt->bindParam(':filtered_value', $filtered_value);
$stmt->execute();