Insert, update or remove data from database (usermeta)

Question

I have a situation here. I'm writing a custom plugin for WordPress. I'm dealing with an issue:

I'v created a metabox for Custom Post Type with add_meta_box and with a callback function where I generate a multiselect box. All users showing up with a user ID. The point is: The Custom Post Type is a group and this group can have multiple members (users). The first thing what I tried was saving all the users, which are subscribed to this group, in one single row in the postmeta table but that's not a good solution.

What I want to do now is: Create a new row, for every single user, in the usermeta table with this key _enroll_user_value_key.

My field: echo '<select multiple name="enroll_user_field[]" id="enroll_user_field">'; this values, I want to pass this, for each single selected user, to a new database row in user_meta. Now I use only this function to save this data: update_user_meta( $enroll_user_data, '_enroll_user_value_key', $post->ID ); But when I select multiple users the row doesn't update or created because there a multiple values passed from the field enroll_user_field[].

How could I fix this? Should I create a foreach loop and repeat the update_user_meta every single time, for each selected user? And what if I remove a user from the group, should I use a seperate delete function or query for this?

EDIT:

add_meta_box(
    'group_member',
    'Group members',
    'group_members_callback',
    'group',
    'normal'
);

function group_members_callback( $post ){
    wp_nonce_field( 'group_members_save', 'group_members_nonce' );
        
    $values = get_post_meta($post->ID, '_group_members_value_key', true);
    $values = explode(',', $values);
    
    echo '<label for="group_members_field">Assign users to this group. If you want to assign multiple users to this module, hold CTRL while you are selecting</label><br /><br />';
    
    echo '<select multiple name="group_members_field[]" id="group_members_field">';
        $users = get_users();
        
        foreach( $users as $user ){
            if( in_array($user->ID, $values )){
                echo '<option selected value="' . $user->ID . '">' . esc_attr( $user->user_email ) . '</option>';
            }else{
                echo '<option value="' . $user->ID . '">' . esc_attr( $user->user_email ) . '</option>';
            }
        }
    echo '</select>';
}


function group_members_save( $post_id ){
    if( ! isset( $_POST['group_members_nonce'] ) ){
        return;
    }
    
    if( ! wp_verify_nonce( $_POST['group_members_nonce'], 'group_members_save') ){
        return;
    }
    
    if( defined('DOING_AUTOSAVE') && DOING_AUTOSAVE ){
        return;
    }
    
    if( ! current_user_can('edit_post', $post_id ) ){
        return;
    }
    
    if( ! isset($_POST['group_members_field'] ) ){
        return;
    }
    
    $group_members_data = sanitize_text_field( implode(',', $_POST['group_members_field'] ) );
    
    update_post_meta( $post_id, '_group_members_value_key', $group_members_data );
}

add_action('save_post', 'group_members_save');

This line update_post_meta( $post_id, '_group_members_value_key', $group_members_data ); should be update_user_meta, because I want to save it in the usermeta table, in seperated rows.

Answer 1

So the problem with either post meta or user meta is that if your key is e.g. _group_members_value_key you only have one item of data per user or per post in which to store the data, and you need many items for each user and many items for each post. This is two columns of data, but in the meta tables you only have one.

Let's say you have this data:

User ID | Group Id
1 | 10
1 | 20 
1 | 30
2 | 10
2 | 40
3 | 30

To put this in e.g. usermeta for user 1 you have these choices:

user id | meta_key | value
1 | "_group_members_value_key" | "10,20,30"

Or:

user id | meta_key | value
1 | "_group_members_value_key_10" | "yes"
1 | "_group_members_value_key_10" | "yes"
1 | "_group_members_value_key_10" | "yes"

Note in the second case you have to put the group ID as part of the key.

So perhaps this second solution works for you - just add the group id to the key and use some extra logic like:

To put a user in a group:

update_user_meta($userId, "_group_members_value_key_" . $groupId, "yes")

To remove a user from a group:

update_user_meta($userId, "_group_members_value_key_" . $groupId, "no")

To check if a user is in a group:

if (get_user_meta($userId, "_group_members_value_key_" . $groupId) == "yes") {

Find all the users in a group:

$user_query = new WP_User_Query( array( 'meta_key' => "_group_members_value_key_" . $groupId, 'meta_value' => 'yes' ) );

I'm not sure if this works for what you want to do though. Let me know. These are code examples so you may have to edit them a bit for exactly what you need but this data structure should work for what you need.

---

It looks like $_POST['group_members_field'] will be an array, so if for example it was post ID's you need to do something like:

foreach($_POST['group_members_field'] as $postId) {
    update_user_meta($someUserId, '_group_members_value_key'.$postId, "yes");
}