What are the potential pitfalls of using external data sources for real-time location autocomplete in PHP applications?

Potential pitfalls of using external data sources for real-time location autocomplete in PHP applications include network latency, data inconsistency, and security risks. To mitigate these risks, it is important to implement caching mechanisms, validate and sanitize user input, and use secure communication protocols when fetching data from external sources. 

// Example of implementing caching mechanism using PHP's built-in caching
$cacheKey = 'location_autocomplete_' . md5($userInput);
$cacheDuration = 3600; // Cache for 1 hour

if ($cachedData = apcu_fetch($cacheKey)) {
    $locations = $cachedData;
} else {
    // Fetch data from external source
    // Process data
    // Store data in cache
    apcu_store($cacheKey, $locations, $cacheDuration);
}

Keywords

security vulnerabilities SQL injection data validation API rate limits data consistency

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