What are common pitfalls to avoid when writing PHP code for forms?

One common pitfall to avoid when writing PHP code for forms is not properly sanitizing user input, leaving your application vulnerable to security risks such as SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always sanitize user input using functions like htmlspecialchars() or mysqli_real_escape_string() before using it in your code. 

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

// Sanitize user input using mysqli_real_escape_string()
$name = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['name']);
$email = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['email']);

Keywords

SQL injection Cross-site scripting (XSS) CSRF attacks form validation secure coding practices

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