What is the purpose of the code snippet provided in the forum thread?

The code snippet provided in the forum thread aims to solve the issue of preventing SQL injection attacks by properly sanitizing user input before using it in database queries. This is crucial for security reasons as it helps protect the database from malicious attacks.

// Sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$clean_user_input = mysqli_real_escape_string($connection, $user_input);

// Use the sanitized input in the database query
$query = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = '$clean_user_input'";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Process the query result as needed