What are common errors to avoid when working with PHP and MySQL together?

One common error to avoid when working with PHP and MySQL together is failing to properly sanitize user input, which can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements with parameterized queries when interacting with your database.

// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();