PHP - position in table - php

Question

How can I find the position a certain row has in my database table?
In my database I have a bunch of Players from a game. They have columns such as ID, name, level, world, and so on.
I want to sort them by Level, and see what position they are in in the list.
So far I've tried this, but it only prints out 0 (the start value I put). It does not seem to iterate through.
Previously I made sure the name is stored in $name.
$query = "SELECT * FROM rookstayers ORDER BY level DESC";
$globalPos = 0;
$result = mysql_query($query);
$num = mysql_numrows($result);
$i = 0;
while($i < $num) {
$posName = mysql_result($result, $i, 'name');
if($posName == '$name')
{
$globalPos = $i;
break;
}
$i++;
}
If my table looks like this (after sorting it by level):
name - level
Joe - 50
Jacob - 47
Sarah - 34
Anna - 19
Then "Sarah" would be number 3.
Anna number 4, etc...
I want the position-number to be in $globalPos.
I only found pure SQL code for this, but I want it in PHP. Is it not possible to do in PHP?

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this is the only problem:
If you use single quotes ', the string is not parsed for variables. If you want to compare a string stored in $name with a string stored in $posName, you should use $posName === $name. You could also use $posName === "$name", but the double quotes are unnecessary.
Notice also, that the mysql functions are deprecated. You should use mysqli or PDO_MySQL instead. (See Choosing an API)

Answer 2

<?php
/*
CREATE TABLE results
(name VARCHAR(12) NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY
,score INT NOT NULL
);
INSERT INTO results VALUES
('Anna',19),
('Jacob',47),
('Joe',50),
('Sarah',34);
*/
include('path/to/connection/stateme.nts');
$query = "
SELECT name, score FROM results ORDER BY score DESC;
";
$result = mysqli_query($conn,$query);
$i=1;
while($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)){
echo $i." ".$row['name']." ".$row['score']."<br/>\n";
$i++;
};
?>