Widget to Show uCash Leaders

[ZacFields]

Hi All,

I've written some code (my first ever SQL/PHP code write, actually) that simply takes each users' Ucash balance and displays them in descending order, stopping at the 20th ranked person.

Running this code directly from a PHP file on my site works great, but I'm trying to get it into a CMS widget and I'm having a little trouble with the concept of using the $output variable rather than echo. Obviously just changing every instance of "echo" to "$output" doesn't work, what am I doing wrong? Here is the code raw:

$user=$_POST['user'];
$username=$_POST['username'];
$ucash=$_POST['ucash'];



$query = "SELECT * FROM `user` ORDER BY `user`.`ucash` DESC";
$result=mysql_query($query);
$num="20";


mysql_close();


echo "<b>Vcash Leaderboard</center></b><br><br>";
?>
<table border=0>
<tr><td><b>Username</b></td><td><b>vCash</b></td></tr>
<?
$i=0;
while ($i < $num) {


$rank=$i+1;

$username=mysql_result($result,$i,"username");
$ucash=mysql_result($result,$i,"ucash");
?>


<tr><td><?echo "$rank. $username"; ?> </td>
<td>$<?echo ROUND("$ucash"); ?> </td> </tr>




<?
$i++;
}


echo "</table>";

I'm feeling like it's something very basic that I'm missing. I'm proud of myself for doing the research that allowed me to write the code in the first place, but this $output stuff has thrown a curveball at me and I guess I'm not just understanding the concept.

Does anyone have any pointers on what I need to change in this code to make it work in the php direct execution widget? Essentially, when I paste this code in exactly as it is, it runs the script just fine... but it displays at the top of the page above the header.

--------------- Added 1323475015 at 1323475015 ---------------

Whoops, can somebody move this to the VB4 programming section? My apologies!

[kh99]

I think you were close with the $output thing, you should just be able to replace each echo with "$output .=", like

$output .= "<b>Vcash Leaderboard</center></b><br><br>";


You'll also need to change the part where you use ?> and <? around some html to be a string constant instead, and then assign it to $output the same way, like

$output .= "<tr><td>$rank$username</td>
<td>$" . ROUND($ucash) . "</td> </tr>";


If you had a lot of code you could also surround it with ob_start() and ob_end_clean() to buffer the output, but you only have a few lines so you might as well make the changes to assign to $output.

[ZacFields]

kh99 - thank you so much. I guess I was just using the output function wrong (I wasn't putting the period in front of it and I think I was messing up the apostrophes and semicolon), but your example helped and I think I've got it working now!

Again, this was my very first raw PHP/SQL code write. Through research I was able to write the code, but my understanding of what I'm writing is still a little fuzzy. Thanks again!