I followed this tutorial to create the countries page. Hooks did not exists when this article was written (March 2004). Therefore, you can be certain that hooks are not needed for the page itself (apart from the fact that I am telling you).
The article tells you to edit original php files for "Who's online". In newer vbulletin versions, we can do this through hooks.
Your provider.php is fine. I suppose you are following test.php from the article in this file. Note the part where it says "START MAIN SCRIPT". The code from providers_hook.php will go here.
How are you displaying the output from providers_hook.php? The vbulletin method is to calculate all the variables and then call a template. In the article, the template is called test. Everything between $navbar and $footer in this template is your custom stuff.
If there are any loops in the page (such as a table with multiple rows, like my countries page), then you have to create an additional template - the bit template. Default vbulletin has many examples of this - postbit, threadbit, reputationbit, forumbit etc etc. Within your php code, you must have a loop and within that you call the 'bit' template and store the result into a variable. In the main template for the page, you just put the variable where you want that table.
Here is my countries template for reference (I call it countries_countries, meaning that its the main template of the countries page).
Code:
$stylevar[htmldoctype]
<html dir="$stylevar[textdirection]" lang="$stylevar[languagecode]">
<head>
$headinclude
<title>$vboptions[bbtitle] - $pagetitle</title>
</head>
<body>
$header
$navbar
<table class="tborder" cellpadding="$stylevar[cellpadding]" cellspacing="$stylevar[cellspacing]" border="0" align="center">
<tr>
<td class="tcat">
Country Code
</td>
<td class="tcat">
Currently Online
</td>
<td class="tcat">
Country Name
</td>
<td class="tcat">
Continent
</td>
</tr>
$showlistbits
</table>
$footer
</body>
</html>
And here is the countries_countrybit template.
Code:
<tr>
<td class="$altclass">
$country[country]
</td>
<td class="$altclass">
$country[tot]
</td>
<td class="$altclass">
$country[printable_name]
</td>
<td class="$altclass">
$country[continent]
</td>
</tr>
The code from countries.php looks like this:
Code:
<?php
/*======================================================================*\
|| #################################################################### ||
|| # countries.php # ||
|| # ---------------------------------------------------------------- # ||
|| # for displaying a list of number of logged in users by country # ||
|| # ---------------------------------------------------------------- # ||
|| # by GodFather 15-October-2007 # ||
|| #################################################################### ||
\*======================================================================*/
// ####################### SET PHP ENVIRONMENT ###########################
error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE);
// #################### DEFINE IMPORTANT CONSTANTS #######################
define('THIS_SCRIPT', 'countries');
// ################### PRE-CACHE TEMPLATES AND DATA ######################
// get special phrase groups
$phrasegroups = array();
// get special data templates from the datastore
$specialtemplates = array();
// pre-cache templates used by all actions
$globaltemplates = array(
'countries_countries',
'countries_countrybit'
);
// pre-cache templates used by specific actions
$actiontemplates = array();
// ######################### REQUIRE BACK-END ############################
require_once('./global.php');
// #######################################################################
// ######################## START MAIN SCRIPT ############################
// #######################################################################
// ### STANDARD INITIALIZATIONS ###
$showlistbits = '';
$altclass = 'alt1';
// ############################### show list of countries ###############################
$countries = $db->query_read("
SELECT s.country, count(*) as tot, c.printable_name, c.continent
FROM " . TABLE_PREFIX . "session s
JOIN " . TABLE_PREFIX . "country c ON s.country=c.iso
GROUP BY s.country
ORDER BY printable_name ASC
");
while ($country = $db->fetch_array($countries))
{
$altclass = ($altclass=='alt1') ? 'alt2' : alt1;
eval('$showlistbits .= "' . fetch_template('countries_countrybit') . '";');
}
$navbits = array();
$navbits[$parent] = "Who's Online by Countries";
$navbits = construct_navbits($navbits);
eval('$navbar = "' . fetch_template('navbar') . '";');
eval('print_output("' . fetch_template('countries_countries') . '");');
/*======================================================================*\
|| ####################################################################
|| #
|| ####################################################################
\*======================================================================*/
?>
Hope that helps.
p.s.: The code above is unaltered, but its not usable because you also need supporting code which stores the countries data in the session table.
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