What are common pitfalls when implementing a rating system in PHP for a download system?

One common pitfall when implementing a rating system in PHP for a download system is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements when interacting with your database to prevent malicious input. 

// Connect to database
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=downloads', 'username', 'password');

// Prepare SQL statement
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO ratings (download_id, user_id, rating) VALUES (?, ?, ?)");

// Bind parameters
$stmt->bindParam(1, $download_id, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$stmt->bindParam(2, $user_id, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$stmt->bindParam(3, $rating, PDO::PARAM_INT);

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

Keywords

SQL injection XSS attacks data validation user authentication security vulnerabilities

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