Create dropdown of users in admin dashboard

Question

I'm trying to make a list of users come up in a widget in the admin dashboard. So far i've got it showing up, but I want the list to show a custom field from the user's profile instead of the normal display_name or ID.

My code so far:

    function wps_userlist_dw() {

wp_dropdown_users(array('name' => 'author',
         'exclude'                 => '1',
         'name'                    => 'author',
         'selected'                 => $user_id,
         'show'                    => 'ID'
    ));

}
function add_wps_userlist_dw() {
       wp_add_dashboard_widget( 'wps_userlist_dw', __( 'Select a User Below' ), 'wps_userlist_dw' );
}
add_action('wp_dashboard_setup', 'add_wps_userlist_dw' );

So instead of ID, i need a custom field (made via Cimy Extra User Fields - http://wordpress.org/plugins/cimy-user-extra-fields/). Lets say the custom field's name that i want to show is 'COMPANYNAME'.

Any thoughts? If i put in 'COMPANYNAME' in the 'show' value, the whole function doesn't show up.

Thanks!!

Answer 1

wp_dropdown_users accept for show arguments only field from the users table, not from user_meta table. If you enable debug, with your code, using 'companyname' for $show argument you will see something like:

WordPress database error: [Unknown column 'wp_users.companyname' in 'field list'] SELECT wp_users.ID,wp_users.user_login,wp_users.companyname FROM wp_users WHERE 1=1 ORDER BY display_name ASC

So, solution is create your customized wp_dropdown_users function (wp_dropdown_users_extended?) just copy the code from the original function and modify it.

Tip: What you need is a function that to retierve users (line 1035 of wp function) use a WP_User_Query (docs) that run a meta query if $show is not one of the field in users table, and then use this meta on the output.

Probably the function should start like so:

function wp_dropdown_users_extended( $args = array() ) {
  $std_fields = array('ID', 'user_login', 'user_nicename', 'user_email', 'user_url', 'display_name');
  if ( isset($args['show']) && in_array($args['show'], $std_fields) ) {
    if ( isset($args['echo'] && ! $args['echo'] )
      return wp_dropdown_users($args);
    else
      wp_dropdown_users($args);
  } else {

    // copy here the code from wp_dropdown_users and customize it ;)    

  }
}