What are common pitfalls when using PHP for database queries?

One common pitfall when using PHP for database queries is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements with parameterized queries to safely pass user input to the database. 

// Example of using prepared statements with parameterized queries to prevent SQL injection

// Establish a database connection
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');

// Prepare a SQL statement with a placeholder for the user input
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');

// Bind the user input to the placeholder
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $_POST['username']);

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

// Fetch the results
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();

Keywords

SQL injection PDO prepared statements error handling data validation

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