What are common pitfalls for PHP beginners when writing code?

One common pitfall for PHP beginners is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection attacks. To solve this, always use functions like htmlspecialchars() or mysqli_real_escape_string() to sanitize user input before using it in a query. 

// Sanitize user input using htmlspecialchars()
$user_input = htmlspecialchars($_POST['user_input']);

// Sanitize user input using mysqli_real_escape_string()
$user_input = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $_POST['user_input']);

Keywords

syntax errors variable scope SQL injection XSS vulnerability proper error handling

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