How to check if user is Sysop using Php in Mediawiki?

Question

I am trying to add a div to my sidebar and I only want this block to show to administrators. How can I check if a user is an administrator in php? I am trying to add this to myskin.php file and dont know how to do it. I have been using something like this to check if a user is logged in,

<?php if($this->data['loggedin']) { ?> 

Is there anything similar to that to check if that user is a sysop?

Answer 1

The code in the answer by *blackops_programmer* checks whether the user can protect pages. Per default, that would be sysops, but the permission can be assigned or removed from any group.

If what you want to do depends on the right to protect pages, then checking the permission is the correct way (except you should use $this->getUser(), not $wgUser). However, if you really want to check for the sysop group, use this:

if ( in_array( 'sysop', $this->getUser()->getEffectiveGroups() ) {
  echo 'Hello People';
}

Answer 2

I think I got it. I added the following to my skin template to add special conditions for sysops and non sysops:

     <?php 

      global $wgUser;

      if($wgUser->isAllowed('protect')) {
         // if sysop
            echo 'Hello People';
        }

        else {
            echo 'Yo';
        }
      ?>            

I got the idea from here: Check if user is sysop

If there is a better way to do this, please do let me know. But so far, the above seems to work when I added that code to the basetemplate of my skin.