Check user's role and store in variable

Question

I am using custom user roles which I create and assign by using a plugin. I was wondering how I could retrieve the user's role and store it in a PHP variable.

What I am trying to achieve is something like this:

Let's say I created 3 custom user roles: role_apple, role_banana and role_carrot

if ( 'role_apple' === $user_role ) {
    echo 'User is an apple';
}
elseif ( 'role_banana' === $user_role ) {
    echo 'User is a bannana';
}

How this can be achieved?

Answer 1

You don't need to store anything, just check the current logged in user via user_can:

global $current_user;
get_currentuserinfo();
if ( user_can( $current_user, "role_apple" ) ){
  // do something
}