Help - I need to get usergroupid from VBB for use elsewhere

[Billspaintball]

I have a login script for my site that uses the VBB database to authenticate.

This works fine.

I also want it to grab the authenticated users usergroupid so I can have different options on the non VBB part of the site depending on the persons usergroup.

The code below registers the session valid_user just fine. I also want to register $usergroup as a session.

Problem I get is that the value I get for usergroupid is blank.

What am I doing wrong and how do I fix it?

PHP Code:

<?php 
include("/home/vader/include/_vbbforumsconnect.php");//this file defines database connection pw, user etc.
session_unregister("valid_user");
session_unregister("usegroup");


// get refering page address and reload if login is sucessfull
$refer = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
    // Connect to MySQL 
     mysql_connect($checkservername,$dbcheckusername,$dbcheckpassword) 
        or die ( 'Unable to connect to server.' ); 

    // Select database on MySQL server 
    mysql_select_db($dbcheckbase) 
        or die ( 'Unable to select database.' ); 

    // Formulate the query 

    $sql = "SELECT * FROM user WHERE 
            username = '$username' "; 

    // Execute the query and put results in $result 
    $result = mysql_query( $sql ) 
        or die ( 'Unable to execute query.' ); 
$res = mysql_fetch_array($result);


if (md5(md5($password) . $res['salt']) == $res['password']) { 
// A matching row was found - the user is authenticated.
    $valid_user = $username;
    $usegroup = $usergroupid;
    session_register('valid_user','usegroup');

Header ('Location:' . $refer); 
print ("username: $valid_user");
print ("<br>Usergroup: $usegroup");
    // display redirection message and manual return link.
    print "<br>You are being redirected back to where you were when you logged in.<br>";
    print "If this fails please ";
    print ("<a href='$refer'>Click here</a> to return.");
    
    } else {
session_unregister("valid_user");
session_unregister("usegroup");
    // Display error message and link to try again.
    print "Your password is not correct<br>";
    print "Please ";
    print ("<a href='$refer'>Click here</a> to return and try again.");
}
?>

[Gary King]

Why don't you just use require_once('./global.php'); then use vBulletin functions, etc.? I think life would be much easier

[Billspaintball]

Never really thought of doing that.

I would prefer to do it the way im trying to do it now (since Im a bit of a PHP n00b and struggling as is, learning the vB functions may be a little too complex for me).

However, Is there any documentation on the vB functions including samples?