What are the advantages of using prepared statements in PHP for database interactions?

Using prepared statements in PHP for database interactions provides several advantages, including improved security by preventing SQL injection attacks, better performance as the database can optimize query execution plans, and easier maintenance as the same prepared statement can be reused with different parameters.

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