What potential pitfalls should be considered when developing a search feature using PHP?

One potential pitfall when developing a search feature using PHP is the risk of SQL injection attacks if user input is not properly sanitized. To prevent this, always use prepared statements and parameterized queries when interacting with a database in PHP. 

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

// Prepare a SQL statement with a placeholder for user input
$stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM products WHERE name = :searchTerm');

// Bind the user input to the placeholder
$stmt->bindParam(':searchTerm', $_GET['searchTerm']);

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

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

Keywords

SQL injection XSS attacks pagination fuzzy search performance optimization

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