Use API in forum?

I have seen a few guides where they show if the player is okay or in hospital. How do they do this.
And is it possible to to use php in a thread, or do you need to use another language?
thanks in advance.

I think he means something like this: https://www.torn.com/forums.php#/p=threads&f=61&t=16034448&b=0&a=0&to=18301173
Should be fairly obvious how the red/green image works though.

I would like to know how the above is done, the red and green icons change on refreshing the page

surely it's not possible to refresh every icon the list like this with API's

How is this Done, how does it work

I remember asking Baldr about this. He told me that this is provided by Bug and he himself didn't know the details . My estimate is that Bug hosts those small light images on his server. Those images change colour with respect to the time left in Hospital. Each image seperate for individual targets. Just like you see factions having graphics of live perks updated through API.

And it is not necessary that the API calls to check the status are made simultaneously. Maybe he has coded it in a way to check status of X number of targets in first minute and next X number of targets in the next minute. This way you can easily avoid crossing the limit.

I figured it out, sort off.
You use imagecreatefrompng to create green picture if player online, else you create an red picture.
Then you host the script on a site, get the url.
And use the bbcode [.image]url[/image.] (without the dot)

Some code to see if your company is recruiting:
(but you need to place arial.ttf in the same path as the code)

.

Bug has a server set up to do this. When you load the page, the images come from his server, and he has it set up to send the red, green, orange, or purple image depending on their status. Red for hosp, Orange for hosp but close to getting out, green for not in hosp, and purple for "other". The purple is used if that person isn't in the system yet and isn't being polled, mostly when I add new targets to the list.  There may be other reasons for that purple "unknown" status, but that's the one that I know about.

I know one of the tricks is that when you poll one of those people and they are in the hospital, it tells you for how long.  All of the targets in that leveling thread are inactive, so they won't be medding out of the hospital.  If it says the guy will be there for 17 minutes and 25 seconds, you store that information, then during that time, you do not need to poll his API again, you just return the Red icon.  When he gets down to a short amount of time, you start showing him with an Orange icon.  When his hosp time reaches zero, you add him back in with the green icon people.

Not needing to poll them when they are Red helps cut down on the # of API calls, and I would assume, it cuts out a lot of them.  Very useful since you have a limit.

The ones showing green, not in hospital, need to be polled more often.  They could be hit at any time, and they will keep showing Green until you check their API again after that hit.

With active players, who might get a revive or med out, it's more difficult since you have to keep checking them even when they are red.