Adding an additional role to an Administrator

Question

User 19 is a WP Admin.

$user = new WP_user( 19 );
$user->add_role( 'custom_role' );

The above code works and adds the custom_role role.

However, when I run the same code on the personal_options_update and edit_user_profile_update hook it does not.

I have added a checkbox to the user profile page. The function called from both the above hooks then...

if( user_can( $user_id, 'administrator' ) ) {
    $user = get_user_by( 'id', $user_id );      
    if( ! empty( $_POST['my_checkbox'] ) )  {

        update_user_meta( $user_id, 'my_checkbox', true );
        $user->add_cap( 'one_cap' );
        $user->add_cap( 'two_cap' );
        $user->add_role( 'custom_role' );

    }
}

one_cap and two_cap are both set correctly for the user, but no sign of custom_role and nothing written to the debug log.

What could be the cause of this?

Answer 1

use the profile_update hook and in the hooked function, run this check to make sure that it's adding the previous data to the users profile on update too.

if ( $update ){
        do_action('profile_update', $user_id, $old_user_data);
}else{
        do_action('user_register', $user_id);
}
return $user_id;

This answer can help you understand it more: WordPress edit_user_profile_update update secondary role