What are the common challenges faced by PHP beginners when creating forms that interact with databases?

Common challenges faced by PHP beginners when creating forms that interact with databases include properly connecting to the database, handling form submission, and sanitizing user input to prevent SQL injection attacks. To solve these issues, beginners should ensure they establish a secure database connection, validate and sanitize user input before inserting it into the database, and handle form submission effectively to insert or retrieve data from the database.

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

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

// Validate and sanitize user input
$name = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['name']);
$email = filter_var($_POST['email'], FILTER_SANITIZE_EMAIL);

// Handle form submission
if(isset($_POST['submit'])){
    $sql = "INSERT INTO users (name, email) VALUES ('$name', '$email')";
    if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
        echo "New record created successfully";
    } else {
        echo "Error: " . $sql . "<br>" . $conn->error;
    }
}

$conn->close();
?>