What are some best practices for using prepared statements in PHP when querying a MariaDB database?

When querying a MariaDB database in PHP, it is highly recommended to use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection attacks and improve performance. Prepared statements allow you to separate SQL logic from data input, reducing the risk of malicious input affecting your database queries. To use prepared statements in PHP with MariaDB, you can utilize the PDO (PHP Data Objects) extension.

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

// Prepare a SQL statement using a prepared statement
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');

// Bind parameters to the prepared statement
$username = 'john_doe';
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username, PDO::PARAM_STR);

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

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

// Output the results
print_r($results);