Php Connect to DB

[KCGaming]

I'm trying to create a script to look at user on my team speak and game servers and assign points through the credits addon for use of clans servers. (this scraping of the servers I have done already)

I want to create a direct connection to the database from the script what commands does Xenforo use to connect to the database

I was going to use

mysql_connect("96.44.166.24", "UserName", "Password ") or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("Database") or die(mysql_error());

But the functions I see in credits code uses

$db = $this->_getDb();

How would I align my database connect so I can talk to the database this way

Thanks in advance for any help (I have 10 days off work and would like to get this done)

 

[KCGaming]

Here is the code I'm using to get some user id info and connect to the database

<?php

define('XF_ROOT', $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . ''); // set this!
define('TIMENOW', time());
define('SESSION_BYPASS', false); // if true: logged in user info and sessions are not needed
require_once(XF_ROOT . '/library/XenForo/Autoloader.php');
XenForo_Autoloader::getInstance()->setupAutoloader(XF_ROOT . '/library');
XenForo_Application::initialize(XF_ROOT . '/library', XF_ROOT);
XenForo_Application::set('page_start_time', TIMENOW);
XenForo_Application::disablePhpErrorHandler();
XenForo_Session::startPublicSession();
error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE); // Turn off the strict error reporting.
$dependencies = new XenForo_Dependencies_Public();
$dependencies->preLoadData();

//Get the default options from XenForo.
$options = XenForo_Application::get('options');

$userid="4"; // set this to what ever as an example im setting it as 4
                           
$userinfo = XenForo_Model::create('XenForo_Model_User')->
                    getUserById($userid,array('join' => XenForo_Model_User::FETCH_USER_FULL ));                              
                                     

Zend_Debug::dump($userinfo);

$db = XenForo_Application::getDb(); // this load the database up will write and read date here soon

I will be writing data soon to the database