List users with the most total posts view

Question

I'm asked by my friend to create a widget for his multiauthor blog. He wants to list 3 authors with the most total post view from their posts. I've got the job done for the post view using post metadata. But I'm confused on querying the authors with that criteria. Any idea?

Thanks for the help.

[update] I'm using this codes and its work. Is there any simpler version?

    global $wpdb;
    $topuser = array();

    // query all posts by each user
    $users = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT ID FROM $wpdb->users ORDER BY ID"); 
    foreach ( $users as $user ) {       
        $query = get_posts( array('author' => $user->ID ));
        $counter = 0;

        // get each post of a user
        foreach ( $query as $post ){
            $views = absint( get_post_meta( $post->ID, 'post_views_count', true ) );
            $counter += $views;
        }
        $topuser[] = array( 'id' => $user->ID, 'views' => $counter);
        wp_reset_query();
    }

    // function to sort array based on views count
    function sortViews($a, $b) {
        return $b['views'] - $a['views'];
    }
    usort($topuser, 'sortViews'); // sort the array
    $output = array_slice($topuser, 0, 3); // slice the array by limit 3

    // output the result: user, total postview count, latest post
    foreach ($output as $user){
        $profile = get_userdata($user['id']);
        $query = get_posts( array('author' => $user['id'], 'numberposts' => 1 ));

        echo '<p>' . $profile->user_nicename .' ('. $user['views'] .')</p>';            
        foreach ( $query as $post ){
            echo '<a href="' . $post->post_name . '">' . $post->post_title . '</a>';
            echo get_post_meta($post->ID, 'post_views_count', true);
        }
    }

Answer 1

List authors by Total Post Views -

If view is custom field name then this functions will return all users in descending order as per their post's TOTAL view count.

• Just drop in this function in your theme's functions.php file .
• Call function wpse_61194_top_authors('view') with meta_key name.

// Usage - 
//      $list = wpse_61194_top_authors('view');
//      foreach ($list as $li) {
//      echo '<li>'.$li->user_nicename.' - '.$li->view.'</li>';
//  }   

function wpse_61194_top_authors ($meta_key) {

    global $wpdb;

    $query = "SELECT wp.post_author, wu.user_nicename, SUM(wm.meta_value) as $meta_key
    FROM $wpdb->posts wp, $wpdb->postmeta wm, $wpdb->users wu
    WHERE wp.ID = wm.post_id 
    AND wp.post_author = wu.id
    AND wm.meta_key = '$meta_key' 
    AND wp.post_type = 'post'
    GROUP BY wp.post_author
    ORDER BY $meta_key DESC";

    $post_count = $wpdb->get_results($query);
    return $post_count;
}

Answer 2

There is no default wordpress api that will give you list of all users.. So you have to manually write query for user table using wp_query

First query all users and then for each users find theirs posts and sum up total view, compare all total views and find the greater three..

Alternatively, you can store total_view field with user meta table for each user and increase it when the post is viewed, in that way you only need to query user table to find user with highest total_view field.