What are some common pitfalls to avoid when working with PHP code in web development?

One common pitfall to avoid when working with PHP code in web development is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to security vulnerabilities such as SQL injection or cross-site scripting attacks. To prevent this, always validate and sanitize user input before using it in database queries or displaying it on the website. 

// Example of sanitizing user input before using it in a database query
$user_input = $_POST['input'];
$clean_input = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $user_input);

$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '$clean_input'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

Keywords

SQL injection XSS attacks insecure file uploads outdated PHP versions unvalidated user input

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