How to pull user/author profile data in a plugin?

Question

My site has a user profile page. For some reason I would like to pull user profile data in my plugin.

I know I can pull logged in user profile data using get_currentuserinfo();.

For example I would like to get displayed profile user id.

Can anyone tell me how to pull it.?

Answer 1

If you're trying to get user data for the displayed profile, you can do it like so:

$thisauthor = get_userdata(intval($author));

That'll return an object filled with everything you need. For instance, if you need the user ID, you can call it like so:

$thisauthor->ID

I use this extensively on the profiles on my site: http://androidandme.com/user/clark

UPDATE

In a plugin, it looks like you need to call the global variable first, like so:

global $author; $thisauthor = get_userdata(intval($author));

Answer 2

Take a look at:

get_user_by() at http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/get_user_by

Answer 3

You can access your wp_users table using WP_User_Query. http://codex.wordpress.org/Class_Reference/WP_User_Query

For example:

$author_query = new WP_User_Query();

// Get the results
$authors = $author_query->get_results();

A more comprehensive example can be seen here: http://wpsmith.net/2012/wp/an-introduction-to-wp_user_query-class/