What are some common pitfalls or mistakes that PHP developers should be aware of when handling user input for database operations?

One common pitfall is not properly sanitizing user input before using it in database operations, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To mitigate this risk, developers should always use prepared statements or parameterized queries to securely handle user input. 

// Example of using prepared statements to handle user input securely
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("INSERT INTO users (username, email) VALUES (:username, :email)");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->bindParam(':email', $email);

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

$stmt->execute();

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting (XSS) prepared statements input validation data sanitization

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