User Roles in multisite - odd behavior

Question

What I'm trying to accomplish is that I'm, at first, creating a new user into my network.

wp_create_user('newuser', 'password', '[email protected]');

At this point, the newuser's role is a subscriber (in network) - now I should move this user into subsite, and change its role as editor. So it would be a subscriber in my network, but an editor in the subsite.

$user = get_user_by('login', 'newuser');
add_user_to_blog( 2, $user->ID, 'editor' );

Logically, this should work, right? But for some reason, the user's role array is empty (in the subsite, in the network its still subscriber as it should be), even that in the subsite's dashboard it shows "Editor". I have also tried to change the role afterward but the role array stays empty.

What I'm missing here?

Answer 1

Nikolay

Can't comment on my own question, so I guess that giving a loose answer is the best and only way to get back to you.

How I'm getting the roles:

$user = get_user_by('login', 'newuser');
$user_meta = get_userdata($user->ID);
$user_roles = $user_meta->roles;

• I do not use any plugin. Fresh WP multisite.

I also tried a small trick to get over this:

if(empty($user_roles)) {
    $wp_user_object = new WP_User($user->ID);
    $wp_user_object->add_role('editor');
}

But the roles arrays is still empty and I'm not able to login in the subsite with the moved user.

What makes this interesting is that in the subsite's dashboard you can see that the user is an "Editor"

EDIT: can't comment on my own question because this account is used in different stackexchange forum, and I posted this question as an guest. duh