What are some common pitfalls when validating form input in PHP, and how can they be avoided?

One common pitfall when validating form input in PHP is not properly sanitizing user input, which can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To avoid this, always use prepared statements or parameterized queries when interacting with your database. 

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

Keywords

form input validation PHP security vulnerabilities XSS attacks input sanitization

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