Document user_load must be called to get fully realized user object

Interestingly, with the addition of some watchdog() calls I see that hook_user() is being fired in my module during a normal request. However, any fields added to the $user object in hook_user() seem to disappear at some later point (confirmed by creating a page node that simply dumps the contents of $user).

Changed the component to reflect the new component categorization. See http://drupal.org/node/301443.

I've noticed the same thing as g011um. If it's getting fired anyway, why not just write it to the global, because you're not saving any time if it's happening at some point. Either that or just don't ever run it until you need it.

Looks like this should be documented somewhere, or perhaps fixed in the user module? Temporarily assigning to the user module to see if it should be fixed or documented.

I am also seeing the same situation as comment #1, It puzzles me why if hook_user() gets run anyway that it doesnt actually update the global user object. I was able to solve this in my module's hook_user() in the following way... I've documented it here in a way that you could drop this in as a completely new module called force_userload.module. Just make sure to set the weight of this module heavier than all others, so it gets run later.

/**
 * Implementation of hook_user().
 * 
 * Ensures global $user gets completely loaded.
 */
function force_userload_user($op, $edit, &$account, $category = NULL) {
  global $user;
  switch ($op) {
    case 'load':
      // Optionally, add/modify the $account object eg,
      // $account->custom_field = 'mystuff';
      if ($user->uid == $account->uid) {
        $user = $account;
      }
      break;
  }
}

UPDATE: this worked flawlessly on my development machine, but didnt seem to work so great on my production machine. I tried the sample code here #361471: Global $user object should be a complete entity which worked better.

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