What best practices should be followed when establishing a connection to a database in PHP?

When establishing a connection to a database in PHP, it is important to follow best practices to ensure security and efficiency. This includes using PDO (PHP Data Objects) or MySQLi extension for connecting to the database, using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection attacks, and storing database credentials securely in a separate configuration file. 

// Using PDO to establish a connection to a MySQL database
$host = 'localhost';
$dbname = 'database_name';
$username = 'username';
$password = 'password';

try {
    $pdo = new PDO("mysql:host=$host;dbname=$dbname", $username, $password);
    $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);
    echo "Connected successfully";
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $e->getMessage());
}

Keywords

MySQLi PDO connection pooling error handling prepared statements

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