What are common pitfalls to look out for when passing data from a form to a MySQL database using PHP?

One common pitfall when passing data from a form to a MySQL database using PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, leaving your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements with parameterized queries to securely pass data to the database. 

// Connect to MySQL database
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "database");

// Prepare SQL statement with placeholders
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2) VALUES (?, ?)");

// Bind parameters to placeholders
$stmt->bind_param("ss", $value1, $value2);

// Assign form data to variables
$value1 = $_POST['input1'];
$value2 = $_POST['input2'];

// Execute the prepared statement
$stmt->execute();

// Close statement and connection
$stmt->close();
$mysqli->close();

Keywords

SQL injection data validation prepared statements PDO form submission.

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