What are some common pitfalls to avoid when developing a PHP-based web application?

One common pitfall to avoid when developing a PHP-based web application is not sanitizing user input, which can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always use prepared statements when executing SQL queries to ensure that user input is properly escaped.

// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');
$stmt->execute(['username' => $username]);
$user = $stmt->fetch();