What potential pitfalls should be considered when working with image files in PHP?

One potential pitfall when working with image files in PHP is the risk of security vulnerabilities such as file upload attacks or malicious code injection. To mitigate these risks, it is important to validate and sanitize user input, restrict file types, and store uploaded files in a secure directory outside the web root. 

// Example code snippet for validating and sanitizing image file uploads
if(isset($_FILES['image'])){
    $file_name = $_FILES['image']['name'];
    $file_tmp = $_FILES['image']['tmp_name'];
    
    $file_ext = pathinfo($file_name, PATHINFO_EXTENSION);
    $allowed_ext = array('jpg', 'jpeg', 'png', 'gif');
    
    if(in_array($file_ext, $allowed_ext)){
        $new_file_name = uniqid().'.'.$file_ext;
        $upload_path = 'uploads/'.$new_file_name;
        
        if(move_uploaded_file($file_tmp, $upload_path)){
            echo 'File uploaded successfully.';
        } else {
            echo 'Error uploading file.';
        }
    } else {
        echo 'Invalid file type.';
    }
}

Keywords

GD library memory exhaustion file size image formats image manipulation

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