What are common pitfalls that beginners might encounter when working with PHP?

One common pitfall for beginners working with PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can leave the application vulnerable to security risks like SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use functions like `mysqli_real_escape_string()` or prepared statements when interacting with databases to prevent malicious input. 

// Example of sanitizing user input before using it in a SQL query
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$clean_input = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $user_input);

// Or using prepared statements
$stmt = $connection->prepare("INSERT INTO table_name (column_name) VALUES (?)");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $user_input);
$stmt->execute();

Keywords

syntax errors undefined variables SQL injection XSS attacks incorrect data types

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