What potential pitfalls should beginners be aware of when using PHP to interact with a database?

Beginners should be aware of SQL injection attacks when using PHP to interact with a database. To prevent this, it is important to use prepared statements with parameterized queries to sanitize user input and avoid direct concatenation of user input into SQL queries. 

// Using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = :username");
$stmt->bindParam(':username', $username);
$stmt->execute();

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