What are common pitfalls when handling form data in PHP?

One common pitfall when handling form data in PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries when interacting with your database to prevent malicious input from being executed as SQL commands.

// Example of using prepared statements to handle form data securely
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO users (username, email) VALUES (:username, :email)");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $_POST['username']);
$stmt->bindParam(':email', $_POST['email']);
$stmt->execute();