What potential issue is highlighted in the PHP code snippet provided regarding checking if a user is already in the favorites list?

The potential issue highlighted in the PHP code snippet is that the check for whether a user is already in the favorites list is only based on the user ID, which may not be unique. This could lead to incorrect results if there are multiple users with the same ID. To solve this issue, a more unique identifier, such as the user's email or username, should be used for checking if a user is already in the favorites list.

// Check if user is already in favorites list using email as the unique identifier
$user_email = $_SESSION['user_email'];
$query = "SELECT * FROM favorites WHERE user_email = '$user_email'";
$result = mysqli_query($conn, $query);

if(mysqli_num_rows($result) > 0) {
    // User is already in favorites list
    echo "User is already in favorites list";
} else {
    // User is not in favorites list
    echo "User is not in favorites list";
}