What are some common pitfalls beginners face when trying to use PHP for user registration and data display?

One common pitfall beginners face when using PHP for user registration is not properly sanitizing user input, leaving the application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements when interacting with the database to prevent malicious input. 

// Example of using prepared statements to insert user registration data into the database

// Assuming $conn is the database connection object

$username = $_POST['username'];
$password = $_POST['password'];

$stmt = $conn->prepare("INSERT INTO users (username, password) VALUES (?, ?)");
$stmt->bind_param("ss", $username, $password);
$stmt->execute();
$stmt->close();
```

Another common pitfall is not validating user input before displaying it on the website, leading to potential cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks. To solve this, always sanitize and validate user input before displaying it to prevent any malicious scripts from being executed.

```php
// Example of sanitizing user input before displaying it on the website

$username = $_POST['username'];
$clean_username = htmlspecialchars($username);

echo "Welcome, " . $clean_username;

Keywords

SQL injection password hashing form validation session management cross-site scripting

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