What potential pitfalls should be considered when retrieving and displaying data from a database in PHP?

One potential pitfall when retrieving and displaying data from a database in PHP is SQL injection attacks, where malicious code is injected into SQL statements. To prevent this, always use prepared statements with parameterized queries to sanitize user input.

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

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

// Bind the parameter
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $_POST['username']);

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

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

// Display the results
foreach ($results as $row) {
    echo $row['username'] . '<br>';
}