What are some common pitfalls to avoid when querying and displaying financial data in PHP?

One common pitfall to avoid when querying and displaying financial data in PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can lead to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements when querying the database to ensure that user input is properly escaped.

// Example of using prepared statements to query financial data securely
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=financial_data', 'username', 'password');

$user_input = $_POST['user_input']; // Assuming this is user input from a form

$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM transactions WHERE amount > :amount");
$stmt->bindParam(':amount', $user_input, PDO::PARAM_INT);
$stmt->execute();

// Display the results
while ($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
    echo $row['transaction_id'] . ' - ' . $row['amount'] . '<br>';
}