What are some common pitfalls to avoid when using PHP to interact with a MySQL database?

One common pitfall to avoid when using PHP to interact with a MySQL database is not sanitizing user input, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements with parameterized queries to safely execute SQL commands. 

// Connect to MySQL database
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "database");

// Prepare a SQL statement with a parameterized query
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $username);

// Set the parameter values and execute the query
$username = $_POST['username'];
$stmt->execute();

// Process the results
$result = $stmt->get_result();
while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    // Do something with the data
}

// Close the statement and database connection
$stmt->close();
$mysqli->close();

Keywords

SQL injection PDO prepared statements error handling data validation

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