What are some common pitfalls to avoid when using PHP to interact with SQL databases for data validation and manipulation?

One common pitfall to avoid when using PHP to interact with SQL databases is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries to securely pass user input to the database. 

// Example of using prepared statements to safely interact with a SQL database in PHP
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');

// Prepare a statement with a placeholder for user input
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");

// Bind the user input to the placeholder
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);

// Execute the query
$stmt->execute();

// Fetch the results
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();

Keywords

SQL injection PDO prepared statements data sanitization error handling

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