What are some common pitfalls to avoid when working with HTML forms and PHP scripts?

One common pitfall to avoid when working with HTML forms and PHP scripts is not properly sanitizing user input before using it in your scripts. This can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks and other security threats. To prevent this, always use functions like htmlspecialchars() or mysqli_real_escape_string() to sanitize user input before processing it in your PHP scripts. 

// Example of sanitizing user input using htmlspecialchars()
$user_input = htmlspecialchars($_POST['user_input']);

// Example of sanitizing user input using mysqli_real_escape_string()
$user_input = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $_POST['user_input']);

Keywords

XSS SQL injection form validation CSRF file uploads

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