What security measures should be taken when developing PHP applications?

When developing PHP applications, it is crucial to implement security measures to protect against common vulnerabilities such as SQL injection, cross-site scripting (XSS), and CSRF attacks. Some key security measures include input validation, using prepared statements for database queries, escaping output data, and implementing proper session management. 

// Example of using prepared statements to prevent SQL injection

// Establish a database connection
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "database");

// Prepare a SQL query using placeholders
$stmt = $mysqli->prepare("SELECT * FROM users WHERE username = ?");
$stmt->bind_param("s", $username);

// Set the parameter values and execute the query
$username = $_POST['username'];
$stmt->execute();

// Bind the result variables and fetch the results
$stmt->bind_result($result);
$stmt->fetch();

// Close the statement and connection
$stmt->close();
$mysqli->close();

Keywords

SQL injection Cross-site scripting (XSS) Input validation Password hashing HTTPS encryption

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