What are common issues with special characters in PHP applications, specifically when interacting with databases like MySQL?

Common issues with special characters in PHP applications when interacting with databases like MySQL include SQL injection vulnerabilities and encoding errors. To prevent SQL injection attacks, it's important to sanitize user input and use prepared statements with parameterized queries. Additionally, encoding issues can arise when special characters are not properly handled, leading to data corruption or display problems. 

// Sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection
$user_input = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $_POST['user_input']);

// Prepare a parameterized query to safely interact with the database
$query = $connection->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?");
$query->bind_param("s", $user_input);
$query->execute();
$result = $query->get_result();

// Handle encoding issues by setting charset when connecting to the database
$connection = new mysqli($host, $username, $password, $database);
$connection->set_charset("utf8");

Keywords

Special characters PHP applications MySQL escaping encoding

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