What are some common pitfalls to avoid when using PHP for web development, particularly in relation to database interactions?

One common pitfall to avoid when using PHP for web development is not properly sanitizing user input before interacting with a database. This can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries when executing SQL queries.

// Example of using prepared statements to interact with a database in PHP
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();