Should Prepared Statements Be Avoided for Single-Execution Queries in a Hosted Environment?

When to Avoid Prepared Statements

A common practice for preventing SQL injection attacks is to use prepared statements. However, there are instances where prepared statements might not be the most suitable option.

In this specific case, the developer is re-engineering a web application that uses basic queries such as SELECT foo,bar FROM baz WHERE quux = ? ORDER BY bar LIMIT 1. These queries are executed only once per page hit. Additionally, the developer is in a hosted environment and prefers to avoid additional server load.

Given these considerations, the developer questions whether using prepared statements is necessary.

Answer

To determine if prepared statements should be avoided, it's essential to consider that prepared statements offer two primary benefits:

• Injection prevention: Prepared statements prevent SQL injection attacks by binding parameters separately from the query, ensuring that user input cannot modify the query structure.
• Query reuse: Prepared statements can be executed multiple times with different parameters without the need to recompile the query, improving performance.

In this specific scenario, the developer is not concerned about query reuse since each query is executed only once per page hit. Therefore, the performance benefit of query reuse is negligible.

However, the injection prevention aspect remains a concern. To address this, the developer can consider using emulated prepared statements. These statements use PHP functions to handle quoting and parameter replacement, providing protection against SQL injection without the overhead of multiple database round-trips.

Recommendation

Based on the information provided, it is advisable to avoid using prepared statements and instead opt for emulated prepared statements. This approach provides protection against SQL injection while avoiding the additional database round-trips that real prepared statements would incur.

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