What are some best practices for querying a database in PHP to populate form fields?

When populating form fields in PHP from a database, it is best practice to use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection attacks and to ensure data integrity. Additionally, it is recommended to properly sanitize and validate user input before displaying it in form fields to prevent any security vulnerabilities. 

// Establish a database connection
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

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

// Prepare and execute a query to fetch data from the database
$stmt = $conn->prepare("SELECT field1, field2 FROM table WHERE condition = ?");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $condition);
$condition = "value";
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->bind_result($field1, $field2);

// Fetch the data and populate form fields
while ($stmt->fetch()) {
    echo '<input type="text" name="field1" value="' . $field1 . '">';
    echo '<input type="text" name="field2" value="' . $field2 . '">';
}

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

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