By crislewis on

Warning! Newbie Question:

I am trying to get to grips with Drupal to provide a solid and secure framework for my (currently) hand build intranet (PHP/Mysql).

Having loaded and installed Drupal 7 on the Aquia drupal stack I am stuck at pretty much first base.

My first (PHP enabled) content page attempt is to simply access the profile of the current user.

The following works perfectly:

global $user;
print_r($user);

However, I have added one custom field to the user account with field name 'field_emp_no' which is intended to provide a key link to an external database which has pretty full on employee data.

The above code does not show the new field in the user object. Using $user->field_emp_no directly doesn't do it ether.

Anyone switch on the lights for me?

Thanks

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

crislewis’s picture

crislewis commented

Hmm, it's all a bit cumbersome and counter intuitive but it seems that fields added to the user are not available after the user is logged on until you force a reload using user_load().

I ended up with the following:


$user_data = user_load($user->uid);

$emp_no = $user_data->field_emp_no['und']['0']['value'];

Which does seem hard work for such a simple activity. Anyone want to give me a simple reason the value is buried this way?

I guess I have a very steep learning curve ahead of me to get to grips with Drupal API. Is there a way to force Drupal to load added field values into the user object at logon so that they are available by simply referring to them as $user->emp_no for example?

shags_j’s picture

shags_j commented

Out of interest what are the three [] variables after field_emp_no for?

Another newbie drupal user.

ibes’s picture

ibes commented

$emp_no = $user_data->field_emp_no['und']['0']['value']

['und'] is for the language - in this case this might be "undefined" -> multi-lingual pages
['0'] is for the first item (PHP counts 0, 1, 2, 3...) -> some fields allow multiple values
['value’] is for the value of the field - there are some more information on this array-level - for example default value and stuff

Bagz’s picture

Bagz commented

Also check out the function get_custom_user_fields which is a better way to do this. For instance you could use

$fieldinfo = field_get_items('user', $account, 'field_emp_no');
if ($fieldinfo) {
  $fieldvalue = check_plain($fieldinfo[0]['value']);
}
else {
  $fieldvalue= '';
}

You can also get a list of custom fields using field_info_instances('user', 'user'), and there are other useful Field API functions.

spet’s picture

spet commented

When searching the API I get no results for get_custom_user_fields. Where does this function come from?

Bagz’s picture

Bagz commented

Sorry, should have said check out field_get_items.

(get_custom_user_fields was my own function name..)

jaypan’s picture

jaypan
Location Victoria, BC
commented

Only data from the {users} table is added to the $user object at load, to keep things streamlined. To load your external data, you will need to call user_load() with a $uid in order to generate a fully loaded user object.

Contact me to contract me for D7 -> D10/11 migrations.

crislewis’s picture

crislewis commented

Thanks for your help.

I've now got access to the added field and can use it to get data from the external database.

Now I also wish to be able to create users using data from the external database.

I have managed to do the basics with user_save() but I can't work out how to include a value for the added field in the creation process.

In it's simpllest form I have:


$new_user = array(  name=>joebloggs,
                            password=>easy,
                            mail=>joe@somewhere.com,
                            status=>1,
                            init=>joe@somewhere.com,
                            field_emp_no=>WMS0001);

$new_user= user_save(null,$new_user);

The creates the user but does not populate the added field. The object returned does have a field_emp_no attribute with a value of 'WMS0001' but this is not the same.

Thanks

jaypan’s picture

jaypan
Location Victoria, BC
commented

Best off starting a new thread on this since it has nothing to do with the original topic.

Contact me to contract me for D7 -> D10/11 migrations.

mariusilie’s picture

mariusilie commented

I think this should work:

$new_user = array(  name=>joebloggs,
                            password=>easy,
                            mail=>joe@somewhere.com,
                            status=>1,
                            init=>joe@somewhere.com,
                            field_emp_no=>array("und" => array(0 => array("value" => WMS0001))),

);

Or like this:

$new_user["field_emp_no"]["und"][0] = array("value" => $user_profile["id"]);
vivdrupal’s picture

vivdrupal commented

Referring to the original topic of the thread, I have a select option in my user registration form.
Its options are coming from a taxonomy term.

Code similar to the above leaves me with an array :

$user_data = user_load($user->uid);
$dept_tid = $user_data->field_tuv_user_department['und'];

In devel I can see the tid is stored in field_tuv_user_department['und']['#default_value']['0'][, but
$dept_tid = $user_data->field_tuv_user_department['und']['#default_value']['0'];
gives "Undefined index: #dafault_value "

Pointers please.

Moved my request to http://drupal.org/node/1281118

duckzland’s picture

duckzland commented

Afaik, #default_value only available in forms, when you are accessing the saved data from user_load, you should use [0]['value'] instead.

Also you should use $user->language to replace the 'und' otherwise if you have multilanguage site it will breaks when you try to use 'und' while in 'en' page

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vivdrupal’s picture

vivdrupal commented

Undefined index: value

Also request you to please follow this up at http://drupal.org/node/1281118