What are some best practices for integrating PHP with other technologies like MySQL for efficient web development?

One best practice for integrating PHP with MySQL for efficient web development is to use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection attacks and improve performance. Prepared statements allow for better separation of data and logic, making the code more secure and maintainable.

// Connect to MySQL database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Use prepared statement to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $conn->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $username);

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

// Bind the result variables
$stmt->bind_result($id, $username, $email);

// Fetch the results
while ($stmt->fetch()) {
    echo "ID: $id, Username: $username, Email: $email";
}

// Close the statement and connection
$stmt->close();
$conn->close();