What are some common pitfalls for beginners when working with PHP and MySQL databases?

One common pitfall for beginners when working with PHP and MySQL databases is not properly sanitizing user input, leaving the application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries to prevent malicious SQL code from being executed.

// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();