What are the potential pitfalls of using PHP for website development?
One potential pitfall of using PHP for website development is the risk of security vulnerabilities if proper precautions are not taken. To mitigate this risk, developers should always sanitize user input, use parameterized queries when interacting with databases, and keep PHP updated to the latest version to patch any known security issues.
// Example of sanitizing user input
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$sanitized_input = htmlspecialchars($user_input);
// Example of using parameterized queries
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();