What potential pitfalls should be avoided when using PHP to handle form data?

One potential pitfall when using PHP to handle form data is not properly sanitizing user input, which can leave your application vulnerable to SQL injection attacks. To avoid this, always use prepared statements when interacting with a database to prevent malicious code from being executed. 

// Connect to the database
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');

// Prepare a SQL statement with placeholders
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username');

// Bind the user input to the placeholders
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $_POST['username']);

// Execute the statement
$stmt->execute();

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

Keywords

SQL injection cross-site scripting data validation form validation security vulnerabilities

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