What potential pitfalls should beginners be aware of when checking the data type of input in PHP?

When checking the data type of input in PHP, beginners should be aware of potential pitfalls such as not properly sanitizing user input, not handling different data types correctly, and not considering potential vulnerabilities like SQL injection attacks. To mitigate these risks, it's important to validate and sanitize user input, use appropriate PHP functions to check data types, and use prepared statements when interacting with databases. 

// Example of checking data type of input in PHP

// Sanitize user input
$input = filter_var($_POST['input'], FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING);

// Check if input is an integer
if (is_numeric($input)) {
    $input = (int) $input;
    echo "Input is an integer.";
} else {
    echo "Input is not an integer.";
}

Keywords

data type input validation PHP type juggling strict comparison

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