update_user_meta adding new rows in db for same key

Question

I have added new user meta for a given user. Let's call it title. Every time I run

$user = get_user_by('login',$username);
update_user_meta($user->ID, 'title','Manager');

The meta is not updated. Instead, a new row gets added to the wp_usermeta table for this user -> meta_key -> meta_value with a new umeta_id.

Also, the meta is not available via get_user_meta($user->ID); I feel I'm missing something in order to get this working correctly. Any ideas?

Answer 1

Try this:

global $current_user;
$user_id = $current_user->ID; // current user ID
$meta = get_user_meta( $user_id, 'title', 'Manager' ); // subject meta

if($meta != '') // updates meta if exists
    update_user_meta($user_id, 'title', 'Manager');
else // creates new meta if not exists
    add_user_meta($user_id, 'title', 'Manager');