What are the best practices for structuring SQL queries in PHP to avoid errors like the one mentioned in the forum thread?

Issue: The error mentioned in the forum thread is likely caused by not properly sanitizing user input in SQL queries, leading to SQL injection vulnerabilities. To avoid such errors, it is recommended to use prepared statements with parameterized queries in PHP to securely interact with the database. Fix:

// Establish a database connection
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Prepare a SQL query with a parameterized statement
$stmt = $conn->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $username);

// Set the parameter values and execute the query
$username = $_POST['username'];
$stmt->execute();

// Get the result set
$result = $stmt->get_result();

// Process the result set
while ($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
    // Handle each row as needed
}

// Close the statement and connection
$stmt->close();
$conn->close();