What are the potential pitfalls of using hardcoded arrays in PHP, especially when dealing with data stored in a database?

Using hardcoded arrays in PHP can lead to maintenance issues, as any changes to the data would require manual updates to the array. This can be problematic when dealing with data stored in a database, as the data may change frequently. To solve this issue, consider dynamically fetching the data from the database and populating an array in your PHP code.

// Connect to the database
$pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase", "username", "password");

// Query to fetch data from the database
$stmt = $pdo->query("SELECT * FROM mytable");
$data = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

// Populate an array with the fetched data
$myArray = [];
foreach($data as $row) {
    $myArray[] = $row;
}