What are common pitfalls when using PHP for form handling and data storage?

One common pitfall when using PHP for form handling and data storage is not properly sanitizing user input, leaving your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements when interacting with a database to prevent malicious SQL queries from being executed.

// Example of using prepared statements to insert data into a database
$pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase", "username", "password");

$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO users (username, email) VALUES (:username, :email)");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $_POST['username']);
$stmt->bindParam(':email', $_POST['email']);
$stmt->execute();