[aggiefan]

Just so everybody knows I finally got this to work. The $_get works just as fine as the variable above, but i used the above statement anyways. However, that didn't write it to the database.

So, what I did to make it work was pass the output of the input cleaner through the template (but hidden so the user can't touch or change):

The input cleaners:

$vbulletin->input->clean_array_gpc('g', array('contest' => TYPE_STR));
$contestname = $vbulletin->GPC['contest'];

$vbulletin->input->clean_array_gpc('g', array('week' => TYPE_STR));
$week = $vbulletin->GPC['week'];

The template

<input type="hidden" value="$contestname" name="contestname" />
<input type="hidden" value="$week" name="getweek" />

You have to clean that through the form in the PHP file

$vbulletin->input->clean_array_gpc('p', array( 
'contestname' => STR,
'getweek' => STR,
(more array cleaning here...)
));

$contestname1 = $vbulletin->GPC['contestname'];
$currentweek = $vbulletin->GPC['getweek'];

The write to db code:

$db->query_write ("INSERT INTO " . TABLE_PREFIX . "xxx (............)
         VALUES ('$contestname1', '$currentweek')

So basically, pass the input cleaner through the template to submit it as part as the form (when they hit submit)...

Even though the posts above didn't directly help, they got me thinking -- so thanks to all who posted. Hope the above makes sense and helps somebody.