What resources or tutorials are recommended for PHP beginners to learn about best practices and modern approaches to database querying?

Beginners looking to learn about best practices and modern approaches to database querying in PHP can benefit from resources such as the official PHP documentation, online tutorials on websites like W3Schools or PHP.net, and books like "PHP and MySQL Web Development" by Luke Welling and Laura Thomson. These resources cover topics such as using PDO (PHP Data Objects) for database connections, prepared statements to prevent SQL injection attacks, and utilizing ORM (Object-Relational Mapping) libraries like Doctrine or Eloquent for more advanced querying techniques.

// Example of using PDO for database querying in PHP
try {
    $pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password');
    $stmt = $pdo->prepare('SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = :id');
    $stmt->bindParam(':id', $userId, PDO::PARAM_INT);
    $stmt->execute();
    
    $user = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
    
    // Do something with the $user data
    
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    echo 'Error: ' . $e->getMessage();
}