What are some common pitfalls for beginners when using PHP?

One common pitfall for beginners when using PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can leave the application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To solve this issue, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries when interacting with a database to prevent malicious input from being executed as SQL code.

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