Get User Custom Field Values

This plugin provides a powerful widget, shortcode (with shortcode builder tool), and template tags for easily retrieving and displaying custom field values for the currently logged in user or any specified user.

This plugin provides functionality similar to the Get Custom Field Values plugin, but for user custom fields (which WordPress manages in a separate database table).

This plugin does NOT help you in setting user custom field values, nor does it provide an interface to list or otherwise manage user custom fields.

The list of useful user custom field values that are provided by default in WordPress are:

• first_name
• last_name
• nickname
• description
• aim
• yim
• jabber

It is up to other plugins or custom code to add additional user custom fields that you may then be able to retrieve with this plugin.

Links: Plugin Homepage | Plugin Directory Page | GitHub | Author Homepage

Developer Documentation

Developer documentation can be found in DEVELOPER-DOCS.md. That documentation covers the numerous template tags, hooks, and shortcode provided by the plugin.

As an overview, these are the template tags provided the plugin:

• c2c_get_current_user_custom() : Template tag to get custom fields for the currently logged in user.
• c2c_get_author_custom() : Template tag to get custom fields for the current author (when on the permalink page for a post, page, or in a loop).
• c2c_get_user_custom() : Template tag to get custom fields for a specified user.

These are the hooks provided by the plugin:

• c2c_get_current_user_custom : An alternative approach to safely invoke c2c_get_current_user_custom() in such a way that if the plugin were deactivated or deleted, then your calls to the function won’t cause errors in your site.
• c2c_get_author_custom : An alternative approach to safely invoke c2c_get_author_custom() in such a way that if the plugin were deactivated or deleted, then your calls to the function won’t cause errors in your site.
• c2c_get_user_custom : An alternative approach to safely invoke c2c_get_user_custom() in such a way that if the plugin were deactivated or deleted, then your calls to the function won’t cause errors in your site.
• c2c_get_user_custom_field_values_shortcode : Filter to customize the name of the plugin’s shortcode.
• c2c_get_user_custom-user_field_proxy : Filter to prevent proxying to user object fields if no value for the custom field was found for the user.
• get_user_custom_field_values/can_author_use_shortcodes : Filter to customize if post author can make use of the ‘user_custom_field’ shortcode.
• get_user_custom_field_values/show_metabox : Filter to customize if the shortcode builder metabox is shown.

The shortcode provided is , which has a number of attributes to customize its behavior and output.

Find out more at the plugin’s WordPress Plugin Repository page.

1. Install via the built-in WordPress plugin installer. Or install the plugin code inside the plugins directory for your site (typically /wp-content/plugins/).
2. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ admin menu in WordPress
3. Optional: Add filters for ‘the_user_meta’ to filter user custom field data (see the end of the file for commented out samples you may wish to include). And/or add per-meta filters by hooking ‘the_user_meta_$field’
4. Give a user a custom field with a value, or have user custom fields already defined. (This generally entails use of plugin(s) that utilize the user custom fields feature built into WordPress. By default, in a practical sense WordPress only sets the ‘first_name’, ‘last_name’, and ‘nickname’ user custom fields, so you could try using one of them, even if just for testing even though WordPress provides functions to get those particular fields.)
5. Optional: Use the provided ‘Get User Custom’ widget -or-
   Use the available shortcode in a post or page -or-
   Use the function c2c_get_current_user_custom() if you wish to access user custom fields for the currently logged
   in user. Use the function c2c_get_user_custom() to access user custom fields for a specified user. Use the function
   c2c_get_author_custom() to access custom fields for the current author (when on the permalink page for a post, page, or
   in a loop). Prepend either of the three mentioned functions with ‘echo’ to display the contents of the custom field; or
   use the return value as an argument to another function.