Extracting a variable from a permalink

Question

I used the "Edit Author Slug" plugin to change the author base to /newbase .

In the functions.php file, I added a new node to the toolbar (View Profile) that when clicked points to ../newbase/johndoe (johndoe is the author slug)

I'm using the author.php page as the /profile and will show some user information.

If the user is logged in and clicks in the "View Profile" link, I have no problem. Inside author.php I can use $current_user->user_login and get all the information.

My problem is for those not logged in or, let say I have a page displaying users and I click on their link which looks like .../profile/mrsmith - I cannot use $current_user .

I would like to somehow pass a variable (maybe query_vars, I don't know) to author.php (/profile) or to extract the "mrsmith" from the URL and the inside author.php I can look up that user in the database and show the data I want.

I appreciate your help on this. Maybe is very easy but I have struggle for 2 days and have tried multiple things and can't figure it out.

Answer 1

You can get the queried author in author.php with get_queried_object():

$author = get_queried_object();
echo $author->ID;

$author_data = get_object_vars( $author->data );

echo $author_data['display_name'];
echo $author_data['user_url'];
echo $author_data['user_email'];