How to use/enable Pagination?

Question

I'm creating a shortcode to display the list of users with a particular profile in WordPress.

But I can not enable or display the pagination. I have 25 users on my site and would like to display 5 profile users per page and include the pagination.

I added a new Role student, and multiple custom fields using Advanced Custom Fields for the student profile.

So I need to display a list of students as the appropriate fields. So far so good, the problem is with paging that I could not enable.

Here a example of my code:

add_shortcode('list-users', 'list_users');

function list_users($atts){

global $wpdb;

$args = array(
    'blog_id'      => '',
    'role'         => 'student',
    'meta_key'     => 'pw_user_status', //I'm using the New User Approve Plugin
    'meta_value'   => 'approved',//If user is denied, he is not appears in the list
    'meta_compare' => '',
    'meta_query'   => array(),
    'include'      => array(),
    'exclude'      => array(),
    'orderby'      => 'display_name',
    'order'        => 'ASC',
    'offset'       => '',
    'search'       => '',
    'number'       => '2',
    'count_total'  => true,
    'fields'       => 'all',
    'who'          => ''
);

$students = get_users($args);

if(is_user_logged_in()){

$content = "<div id='list-of-users'>";

   foreach($students as $student){

    $content .= "<li>";
    $content .= "<div class=\"edit-profile\">";
    if(current_user_can('administrator')){
       $link_of_profile_of_user = get_edit_user_link($aluno->ID);
       $content .= "<a href=".$link_of_profile_of_user." class=\"edit-profile\">"."Edit this profile"."</a>";
     }
    $content .= "</div>";
    $content .= get_avatar($student->ID);
    $content .= "<span class='item'>Name: </span>" . get_the_author_meta('display_name', $student->ID) . "<br />";
    $content .= "<span class='item'>Date of Birth: </span>" . get_the_author_meta('date_of_birth_acf_student', $student->ID) . "<br />";
    $content .= "<span class='item'>Course: </span>" . get_the_author_meta('course_acf_student', $aluno->ID) . "<br />"
    $content .= "<span class='item'>Email: </span>" . get_the_author_meta('user_email', $student->ID) . "<br />";
    $content .= "<span class='item'>Phone: </span>" . get_the_author_meta('phone_acf_student', $student->ID) . "<br />";
    $content .= "<span class='item'>City: </span>" . get_the_author_meta('city_acf_student', $student->ID) . "<br />";
    $content .= "</li>";

   }//close foreach

$content .= "</div>";

    return $content;

}//close the conditional for user logged

}//close function

Answer 1

I realise that you say that you can't enable paging of users, but if it's a case of you don't know how, you can pass 'number' and 'offset' in the args array.

In your example to get page 2 of your users, set 'number' as '5' and 'offset' as '5'.

If using those variables is not suitable you can always use a for loop with a count (instead of foreach) and insert a break every 5 iterations eg.

for ($i = 0; $i < count($students); $i++) {
    // some code here
    if ($i % 5 == 0 && $i != 0 && $i != count($students)) {
        // insert page break code here
    }
}

Answer 2

I don't use pages in WordPress posts or pages too often, so I first did a test with this hand written markup. I used 26 users to purposefully get a last page with less than 5 students on it. Just to be certain.

<ul>
    <li>A</li>
    <li>B</li>
    <li>C</li>
    <li>D</li>
    <li>E</li>
</ul>

<!--nextpage-->

<ul>
    <li>F</li>
    <li>G</li>
    <li>H</li>
    <li>I</li>
    <li>J</li>
</ul>

<!--nextpage-->

<ul>
    <li>K</li>
    <li>L</li>
    <li>M</li>
    <li>N</li>
    <li>O</li>
</ul>

<!--nextpage-->

<ul>
    <li>P</li>
    <li>Q</li>
    <li>R</li>
    <li>S</li>
    <li>T</li>
</ul>

<!--nextpage-->

<ul>
    <li>U</li>
    <li>V</li>
    <li>W</li>
    <li>X</li>
    <li>Y</li>
</ul>

<!--nextpage-->

<ul>
    <li>Z</li>
</ul>

WordPress produces 6 pages with links in both the Page and the Post editor. You didn't specify which you were using.

---

To produce this markup with PHP, I created list of dummy students (A-Z) with this code since I could not produce your list.

// Change this to change the number of students per page.
$students_per_page = 5;

// Set up a dummy user list. (26)
$students = str_split( 'ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ' );

// Break the whole list in page sized chunks.
$student_chunks = array_chunk( $students, $students_per_page );

// Cycle through each page.
foreach ( $student_chunks as $student_chunk )
    $pages[] = wpse_98352_get_student_page( $student_chunk );

// Add page breaks and echo post or page.
echo join( "\n<!--nextpage-->\n", $pages );

/**
 * This code should be replaced with the actual code for each students
 * page.
 *
 * @param array $students A page worth of students.
 * @return string. Text of for this page.
 */
function wpse_98352_get_student_page( $students ) {

    $return .= '<ul>';

    foreach ( $students as $student )
        $return .= "<li>$student</li>";

    $return .= '</ul>';

    return $return;
}

I got this:

<ul><li>A</li><li>B</li><li>C</li><li>D</li><li>E</li></ul>
<!--nextpage-->
<ul><li>F</li><li>G</li><li>H</li><li>I</li><li>J</li></ul>
<!--nextpage-->
<ul><li>K</li><li>L</li><li>M</li><li>N</li><li>O</li></ul>
<!--nextpage-->
<ul><li>P</li><li>Q</li><li>R</li><li>S</li><li>T</li></ul>
<!--nextpage-->
<ul><li>U</li><li>V</li><li>W</li><li>X</li><li>Y</li></ul>
<!--nextpage-->
<ul><li>Z</li></ul>

Which I pasted into a page to test.

---

Then I adjusted the $students_per_page variable to 6, which got me this:

<ul><li>A</li><li>B</li><li>C</li><li>D</li><li>E</li><li>F</li></ul>
<!--nextpage-->
<ul><li>G</li><li>H</li><li>I</li><li>J</li><li>K</li><li>L</li></ul>
<!--nextpage-->
<ul><li>M</li><li>N</li><li>O</li><li>P</li><li>Q</li><li>R</li></ul>
<!--nextpage-->
<ul><li>S</li><li>T</li><li>U</li><li>V</li><li>W</li><li>X</li></ul>
<!--nextpage-->
<ul><li>Y</li><li>Z</li></ul>

So, it looks like the algorithm works on different students per page, even when the final page is less than a full page.

NOTE: You will need to change the wpse_98352_get_student_page() function to produce your page data. I just used this markup to make testing possible. You will also have to stuff all this into the shortcode function.