What are some common pitfalls to avoid when using PHP to automate the creation of database tables?

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

// Example of using prepared statements to create a table in a database

$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "myDB";

// Create connection
$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// SQL statement with placeholders for table name and column names
$sql = "CREATE TABLE ? (
    id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    firstname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    lastname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    email VARCHAR(50),
    reg_date TIMESTAMP
)";

// Prepare the statement
$stmt = $conn->prepare($sql);

// Bind parameters
$tableName = "users";
$stmt->bind_param("s", $tableName);

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

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

Keywords

SQL injection PDO prepared statements schema validation error handling

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