Checking array against author id in loop

Question

So I have a function in Wordpress with a plugin that returns a list of friends as an array. The function code is here:

function friends_get_list($tmp_uid, $friend_status=1) {
    global $wpdb;

    $friend_status = intval($friend_status);
    if (($friend_status != 1) && ($friend_status != 0))
        $friend_status = 1;

    if ( $friends_list = get_transient( 'wpmudev-friends-'. $tmp_uid .'-'. $friend_status ) ) {
        return $friends_list;
    }

    $query = $wpdb->prepare("SELECT friend_user_ID FROM " . $wpdb->base_prefix . "friends WHERE user_ID = %d AND friend_approved = %d",
        $tmp_uid, $friend_status);
    //echo "query=[". $query ."]<br />";
    $friends_list = $wpdb->get_col($query);
    set_transient( 'wpmudev-friends-'. $tmp_uid .'-'. $friend_status, $friends_list, 60 );

    return $friends_list;
}

I would then like to call this function to obtain the list of the current users friends and then check this against the authors of the displayed posts. I can do this like so: $friendsIdArray = friends_get_list( get_current_user_id(), 1 ) ; which should return all of the confirmed friends for the current user as long as I reference the function. I then want to include this in the Wordpress query to only show posts created by authors who are friends of the current user. I believe I could use this code to load the results into a variable: $query = new WP_Query( array( 'author' => implode( ",", $friendsIdArray ) ); but am unsure exactly where this should go in the wordpress loop to achieve the desired result. Any help is much appreciated!

Answer 1

You actually want author__in, and you can use the array. You shouldn't implode it:

$query = new WP_Query( 
  array( 
    'author__in' => $friendsIdArray 
  )
);

As far as where in the Loop this goes, I'm not sure I understand. This occurs before creating your a Loop, not in it.