What best practices should be followed when handling user input and querying a database in PHP?

When handling user input and querying a database in PHP, it is important to sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection attacks. Use prepared statements with parameterized queries to securely interact with the database. Additionally, validate and sanitize user input before using it in database queries to ensure data integrity and security. 

// Sanitize user input
$user_input = filter_var($_POST['user_input'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Prepare a SQL statement using a parameterized query
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $user_input);
$stmt->execute();

// Fetch results
$results = $stmt->fetchAll();

Keywords

SQL injection prepared statements PDO input validation data sanitization

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