What are the benefits of switching to PDO or mysqli for database interactions in PHP?

Switching to PDO or mysqli for database interactions in PHP offers several benefits, including improved security through prepared statements that help prevent SQL injection attacks, better performance due to optimized database access, and increased flexibility by supporting multiple database types.

// Example using PDO for database interactions
try {
    $pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase", "username", "password");
    $stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = :id");
    $stmt->bindParam(':id', $userId);
    $stmt->execute();
    $user = $stmt->fetch();
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo "Error: " . $e->getMessage();
}