Joomla's Who's Online Counter - How to add thousand separator? - php

Question

One of my sites frequently has more than 1000 concurrent visitors and just for consistency I want to add a thousands separator to the display so it shows like 1,000.
My initial thought was just to add number_format before the variable holding the guest count but this stops the counter working for some reason.
The function in helper.php counting the guests looks like this:
// show online count
static function getOnlineCount() {
$db = JFactory::getDbo();
// calculate number of guests and users
$result = array();
$user_array = 0;
$guest_array = 0;
$query = $db->getQuery(true);
$query->select('guest, usertype, client_id');
$query->from('#__session');
$query->where('client_id = 0');
$db->setQuery($query);
$sessions = (array) $db->loadObjectList();
if (count($sessions)) {
foreach ($sessions as $session) {
// if guest increase guest count by 1
if ($session->guest == 1 && !$session->usertype) {
$guest_array ++;
}
// if member increase member count by 1
if ($session->guest == 0) {
$user_array ++;
}
}
}
$result['user'] = $user_array;
$result['guest'] = $guest_array;
return $result;
}
And in the template the data is displayed using the following:
<?php if ($showmode == 0 || $showmode == 2) : ?>
<?php $guest = JText::plural('MOD_WHOSONLINE_GUESTS', $count['guest']); ?>
<?php $member = JText::plural('MOD_WHOSONLINE_MEMBERS', $count['user']); ?>
<p><?php echo JText::sprintf('MOD_WHOSONLINE_WE_HAVE', $guest, $member); ?></p>
Where do I put the number_format so the separator is added please?

Answer 1

does this not work?
$guest = JText::plural('MOD_WHOSONLINE_GUESTS',number_format($count['guest'],0,'.',','));