How to pull a User Variable from the database and display it in html/php

Question

In my database I've created a table called accounts. The accounts table contains: id, username, password, points.

This is the code I'm running to pull and display the Points variable.

$user = $_SESSION['sess_user'];
$sql = mysql_query("SELECT points FROM accounts WHERE username='".$user."'");
$points = $sql;

Then a bit further down I use this in html.

<p>Welkom, <?=$_SESSION['sess_user'];?>! Dit is jouw Managerpaneel. Je hebt momenteel <?=$points?> Managerpunten.</p>

Now, it does show the session Username, but it doesn't display anything for points :( it just completely skips it.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You are not actually fetching your results. mysql_query() returns a resource ID. You need to pass this to a function like mysql_fetch_assoc() to get your actual results.

$sql = mysql_query("SELECT points FROM accounts WHERE username='".$user."'");
$row = mysql_fetch_assoc($sql);
$points = $row['points'];

Please, don't use mysql_* functions in new code. They are no longer maintained and are officially deprecated. See the red box? Learn about prepared statements instead, and use PDO, or MySQLi - this article will help you decide which. If you choose PDO, here is a good tutorial.

Answer 2

you are missing this:

$row = mysql_fetch_array($sql);
$points = $row['points'];

for more info: mysqlfetcharray