get_user_meta( int $user_id, string $key = '', bool $single = false ): mixed

User Contributed Notes

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   Giulio Daprela 10 years ago

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   If the key does not exist the function will return an empty string or an empty array depending on the value of the $single parameter

   • It will also return boolean false if ! is_numeric( $user_id ) or ! absint( $user_id ).

     thenbrent 7 years ago
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   Codex 10 years ago

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   Getting all meta data
   This example demonstrates leaving the $key argument blank, in order to retrieve all meta data for the given user (in this example, user_id = 9):

   <?php
     $all_meta_for_user = get_user_meta( 9 );
     print_r( $all_meta_for_user );
   ?>

   Results:

   Array ( [first_name] => Array ( [0] => Tom ) [last_name] => Array ( [0] => Auger)
[nickname] => Array ( [0] => tomauger ) [description] => etc.... )

   Note: In order to access the data in this example you need to dereference the array that is returned for each key, like so:

   $last_name = $all_meta_for_user['last_name'][0];

   To avoid this, you may want to run a simple array_map() on the results of get_user_meta() in order to take only the first index of each result (thus emulating what the $single argument does when $key is provided:

     $all_meta_for_user = array_map( function( $a ){ return $a[0]; }, get_user_meta( $user_id ) );
     print_r( $all_meta_for_user );

   Results:

   Array ( [first_name] => Tom [last_name] => Auger [nickname] => tomauger [description] => etc.... )

   Additionally, if you want to return ALL meta for a specific user and filter out empty values, you can run array_filter() on the results of the array_map() above:

   // Get all user meta data for $user_id
   $meta = get_user_meta( $user_id );
   
   // Filter out empty meta data
   $meta = array_filter( array_map( function( $a ) {
   	return $a[0];
   }, $meta ) );
3. Skip to note 8 content

   Codex 10 years ago

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   This example returns and then displays the last name for user id 9.

   <?php 
     $user_id = 9;
     $key = 'last_name';
     $single = true;
     $user_last = get_user_meta( $user_id, $key, $single ); 
     echo '<p>The '. $key . ' value for user id ' . $user_id . ' is: ' . $user_last . '</p>'; 
   ?>

   Result:

   The last_name value for user id 9 is Franklin
4. Skip to note 9 content

   cartpauj 4 years ago

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   Note: When doing get_user_meta( $user_id ); without a meta key, the values are not unserialized automatically. You will need to maybe_unserialize() them.
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   Goran87 9 years ago

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   To check if returned value is empty, ie does not exist, you could use something like:

   global $current_user; 
   
   get_currentuserinfo();
   
   if ( $current_user ) {
   	$permission = get_user_meta( $current_user->ID, 'some_meta' , true );
   	
   	if ( ! empty( $permission ) ) {
   		// do stuff
   	}
   }
   // works for both array and single values

   • The function get_currentuserinfo() is deprecated: https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/get_currentuserinfo/

     Jacob Hill 5 years ago