What are common pitfalls when using PHP to interact with MySQL databases, as seen in the provided code snippet?

One common pitfall when using PHP to interact with MySQL databases is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, it is important to use prepared statements or parameterized queries to securely interact with the database. 

// Original code snippet vulnerable to SQL injection
$username = $_POST['username'];
$password = $_POST['password'];

$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username='$username' AND password='$password'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Fixed code snippet using prepared statements
$username = $_POST['username'];
$password = $_POST['password'];

$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username=? AND password=?";
$stmt = mysqli_prepare($connection, $query);
mysqli_stmt_bind_param($stmt, 'ss', $username, $password);
mysqli_stmt_execute($stmt);
$result = mysqli_stmt_get_result($stmt);

Keywords

MySQL PHP database connection SQL injection error handling

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