Userpoints: How To Display User Points On All Pages

Lars J wrote me asking how to display points with every user's info on all pages.

This article is the answer to this question.

Prerequisites

Before you can use this method, you have to be using the latest user points module.

You must have a version that supports the new call.

//$Id: userpoints.module,v 1.21 2005/10/30 02:23:02 kbahey Exp $ 

The version should be 1.21 or later. 

Method

Basically, Drupal has a central function for displaying user info. This function is called format_name() in the file includes/common.inc . So the solution relies on changing that function to include the number of points with the user name.

As always, if you are not comfortable editing program files, then do not do it. 

The function reads partially like this:

function format_name($object) {

  if ($object->uid && $object->name) {
    // Shorten the name when it is too long or it will break many tables.
    if (strlen($object->name) > 20) {
      $name = truncate_utf8($object->name, 15) .'...';
    }
    else {
      $name = $object->name;
    }

    if (user_access('access user profiles')) {
      $output = l($name, 'user/'. $object->uid, array('title' => t('View user profile.')));
    }
    else {
      $output = $name;
    }
  }
  else if ($object->name) {
    // Sometimes modules display content composed by people who are
    // not registered members of the site (e.g. mailing list or news
    // aggregator modules). This clause enables modules to display
    // the true author of the content.
    if ($object->homepage) {
      $output = '<a href="'. $object->homepage .'">'. $object->name .'</a>';
    }
    else {
      $output = $object->name;
    }

    $output .= ' ('. t('not verified') .')';
  }
  else {
    $output = variable_get('anonymous', 'Anonymous');
  }

  return $output;
} 

 What needs to be done is making it look like this:

function format_name($object) {

  if ($object->uid && $object->name) {
    // Shorten the name when it is too long or it will break many tables.
    if (strlen($object->name) > 20) {
      $name = truncate_utf8($object->name, 15) .'...';
    }
    else {
      $name = $object->name;
    }

    if (user_access('access user profiles')) {
      $output = l($name, 'user/'. $object->uid, array('title' => t('View user profile.')));
    }
    else {
      $output = $name;
    }

    if (module_exist('userpoints')) {
      $output .= '(' . userpoints_get_current_points($object->uid) . ')';
    }
  }
  else if ($object->name) {
    // Sometimes modules display content composed by people who are
    // not registered members of the site (e.g. mailing list or news
    // aggregator modules). This clause enables modules to display
    // the true author of the content.
    if ($object->homepage) {
      $output = '<a href="'. $object->homepage .'">'. $object->name .'</a>';
    }
    else {
      $output = $object->name;
    }

    $output .= ' ('. t('not verified') .')';
  }
  else {
    $output = variable_get('anonymous', 'Anonymous');
  }

  return $output;
}

 The only lines we added are the following:

    if (module_exist('userpoints')) {
      $output .= '(' . userpoints_get_current_points($object->uid) . ')';
    } 

These will cause every instance of users displayed on the site to have the number of points they have in brackets following the name.

You can add a div to the output so you can theme the points anyway you like with CSS in your stylesheets. 

Enjoy ...