What are the potential pitfalls of PHP code not distinguishing between uppercase and lowercase letters in database searches?

When PHP code does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters in database searches, it can lead to inaccurate search results or potentially expose security vulnerabilities. To solve this issue, you can use the `COLLATE` clause in your SQL query to specify a case-insensitive collation for the comparison. 

// Assuming $searchTerm is the search term provided by the user
$searchTerm = $_GET['searchTerm'];

// Use COLLATE clause in SQL query to make the comparison case-insensitive
$sql = "SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE column_name COLLATE utf8_general_ci LIKE '%$searchTerm%'";

// Execute the query and fetch results
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $sql);

// Process the results
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) {
    // Output or process the data as needed
}

Keywords

case sensitivity database searches PHP code uppercase lowercase

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