Get users with different roles and call function on each of them (user_meta)

Question

First of all, I have a custom function in functions.php that gets some author information. This works on great on single posts with a single author.

<?php function the_author_box() { ?>
<div class="widget about-the-author-widget">        
    <h3 class="widget-title">Over de auteur</h3>
    <div class="author-header clear">
        <div class="author-avatar-wrap"><?php echo get_avatar(get_the_author_meta( 'ID' )); ?></div>
        <h4 class="author-name"><?php the_author_meta('display_name'); ?></h4>
    </div>
    <div class="author-description"><p><?php the_author_meta('description'); ?></p></div>
    <ul class="author-meta">
        <?php if ( get_the_author_meta( 'url' ) ) { ?>
            <li class="url">
                <a href="<?php the_author_meta( 'url' ); ?>" title="De website van <?php the_author_meta( 'display_name' ); ?>">Website</a>
            </li>
            <?php // a lot more metas ?>
    </ul>
</div>
    <?php
} ?>

But now I'm designing a custom page template to display the 'the_author_box' for every user who is either a contributor or an administrator. All on the same page.

I figured I could get the users by doing so (borrowed from stackexchange). Build a new function:

function get_clients() { 

    $users = array();
    $roles = array('author', 'contributor', 'administrator');

    foreach ($roles as $role) :
        $users_query = new WP_User_Query( array( 
            'fields' => 'all_with_meta', 
            'role' => $role, 
            'orderby' => 'display_name'
            ) );
        $results = $users_query->get_results();
        if ($results) $users = array_merge($users, $results);
    endforeach;

    return $users;
}

Call the users, and execute the function for every user:

<?php
$users_array = get_clients();
foreach ($users_array as $user) {
$user->the_author_box();
?>

But that doesn't work. I am guessing because it's still 'the author meta' that's called, and not the user's meta.

How can I call a function for $user->function(). In other words, how can I get meta information from that user?

Answer 1

First, always var_dump() something if you aren't sure what exactly you got. If you ain't got XDebug installed and configured, just use

printf( '<pre>%s</pre>', htmlspecialchars( var_export( $dumpMe, true ) ) );

which will bring up an equally informative response.

About the WP_User_Query) IIRC it returns objects which are instances of WP_User. You can test that with

$user instanceof WP_User AND print 'Yes, I am a WP_User object';

If that is the case, simply use

var_dump( get_user_meta( $user->user_id ) );

and you should be fine. Btw, there's no real Author Meta.