What potential pitfalls should be considered when using PHP to handle form data and interact with a database?

One potential pitfall when using PHP to handle form data and interact with a database is SQL injection attacks. To prevent this, always sanitize and validate user input before using it in database queries. Another issue to consider is the security of database connection credentials, which should never be hard-coded in the PHP code. 

// Sanitize and validate user input to prevent SQL injection
$username = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['username']);
$password = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['password']);

// Securely store database connection credentials
$db_host = 'localhost';
$db_user = 'username';
$db_pass = 'password';
$db_name = 'database';

$conn = mysqli_connect($db_host, $db_user, $db_pass, $db_name);
if (!$conn) {
    die("Connection failed: " . mysqli_connect_error());
}

Keywords

SQL injection data validation prepared statements error handling cross-site scripting

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