Hello all - I'm very new to working with blocks, but have got to grips with the basics of building them. I'm not quite so up-to-speed on how I can call up user information, etc. to display in a block.
What I'm looking to do is display the custom profile fields for the current user, as a kind of quick reference for them (i.e. without them having to visit their profile page)
Any pointers or suggestions would be really welcome
Cheers -- Tony
Ok - doing a Lewis Carroll White Queen and screaming before my finger was pricked - working on it a bit more, I found I can just call the global $USER and then access $USER->custom_field_name
sorry to bother you all
cheers -- Tony
I had a message asking how I did this, so I thought it would be better to put it here so that anyone can see (and correct, if what I've said is either inaccurate or bad practice!)
I'm assuming anyone reading this is ok with the basics of building a block (as shown at http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Blocks )
So... in the block content section of your block's php file, you need some code along the lines of the following:
function get_content() {
global $USER; // you need this line to be able to use the global array "$USER" within this function
if ($this->content !== NULL) {
return $this->content;
}
$this->content = new stdClass;
$this->content->text = 'Favourite colour: '.$USER->favcolour; // I haven't worked out how to get the field description dynamically displayed, so I've just hard coded the text to explain the field (i.e. "Favourite colour: "). The "favcolour" bit of "$USER->favcolour" is the unique name you gave your custom profile field when you set it up in the Users > Profile fields section of the site administration. This bit of code simply asks for the "favcolour" entry in the global $USER array. As it stand here, this block only displays a single line of text, so in practice I'm sure you would want to combine it with other stuff.
$this->content->footer = '';
return $this->content;
}
This was exactly what I was looking to do in order to show a pupil's self-set target grade on the front page when they log on to remind them (Subjects that use books have stickers on the front - I wanted something a bit more hi-tech!)
The code I've put in my block is shown below:
<?php //$Id: block_target_level.php,v 1.0 2009/03/20 15:42:44 defacer Exp $
class block_target_level extends block_base {
function init() {
$this->title = 'My Target';
$this->version = 2009032000;
}
function get_content() {
global $USER;
if ($this->content !== NULL) {
return $this->content;
}
$this->content = new stdClass;
$this->content->text = 'Target level:<br>'.$USER->NCLevel;
$this->content->footer = '';
return $this->content;
}
}
?>
The user field that I have created is called 'NCLevel' and I can see this when I look at a profile. However, it won't show up in the block on the front page. If I change the code to something like '$USER->description' it quite happily shows the description field.
Any ideas?! Many thanks in advance!
Steve
