What potential pitfalls should be considered when using LDAP functions in PHP to access the Active Directory?

Potential pitfalls when using LDAP functions in PHP to access Active Directory include security vulnerabilities such as injection attacks, lack of error handling leading to potential data leakage, and performance issues due to inefficient queries. To mitigate these risks, it is important to sanitize user input, implement proper error handling, and optimize LDAP queries to retrieve only necessary data. 

// Example of sanitizing user input before using it in an LDAP query
$username = filter_var($_POST['username'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Example of implementing error handling when connecting to LDAP
$ldapconn = ldap_connect("ldap://example.com");
if (!$ldapconn) {
    die("Could not connect to LDAP server");
}

// Example of optimizing LDAP query to retrieve only necessary data
$attributes = array("cn", "mail");
$filter = "(sAMAccountName=$username)";
$result = ldap_search($ldapconn, "ou=Users,dc=example,dc=com", $filter, $attributes);

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