What are the potential challenges or limitations when accessing data from external databases in PHP?

One potential challenge when accessing data from external databases in PHP is ensuring proper security measures are in place to prevent SQL injection attacks. To mitigate this risk, it is important to use prepared statements or parameterized queries when interacting with the database. 

// Example of using prepared statements to access data from an external database

// Establish a connection to the database
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');

// Prepare a statement with a placeholder for user input
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');

// Bind the user input to the placeholder
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);

// Execute the statement
$stmt->execute();

// Fetch the results
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();

// Loop through the results and do something with the data
foreach ($results as $row) {
    echo $row['username'] . '<br>';
}

Keywords

SQL injection PDO database connection data validation error handling

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