What is the significance of using joins in PHP when working with MySQL databases?

When working with MySQL databases in PHP, joins are essential for combining data from multiple tables based on a related column. This allows us to retrieve data from different tables in a single query, making our code more efficient and reducing the number of queries needed to fetch the required information.

// Example of using a join in PHP with MySQL
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=my_database', 'username', 'password');

$query = $pdo->prepare("SELECT users.username, posts.title FROM users 
                        JOIN posts ON users.id = posts.user_id 
                        WHERE posts.status = 'published'");
$query->execute();

$result = $query->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);

foreach ($result as $row) {
    echo $row['username'] . ' - ' . $row['title'] . '<br>';
}