I have a pretty specific requirement to show different text in a field label on the user profile page based on the current user's role. I can't seem to figure out how to check whether the current use is an "author".
I am looking for a function like:
is_user_in_role($user, "author"); I imagine this is pretty simple, but I have searched for too long without an answer so I thought I would post it here.
If you only need this for current user current_user_can() accepts both roles and capabilities.
UPDATE: Passing a role name to current_user_can() is no longer guaranteed to work correctly (see #22624). Instead, you may wish to check user role:
$user = wp_get_current_user(); if ( in_array( 'author', (array) $user->roles ) ) { //The user has the "author" role } 
current_user_can('editor') I was looking for a way to get a user's role using the user's id. Here is what I came up with:
function get_user_roles_by_user_id( $user_id ) { $user = get_userdata( $user_id ); return empty( $user ) ? array() : $user->roles; } Then, an is_user_in_role() function could be implemented like so:
function is_user_in_role( $user_id, $role ) { return in_array( $role, get_user_roles_by_user_id( $user_id ) ); } Calling roles on User Object $user->roles do not return all the roles. The correct way to find if the user has a role or capability is following. (This works in wp version 2.0.0 and greater.) The following function works with user id you can get the current user id by $current_user_id = get_current_user_id();
/** * Returns true if a user_id has a given role or capability * * @param int $user_id * @param string $role_or_cap Role or Capability * * @return boolean */ function my_has_role($user_id, $role_or_cap) { $u = new \WP_User( $user_id ); //$u->roles Wrong way to do it as in the accepted answer. $roles_and_caps = $u->get_role_caps(); //Correct way to do it as wp do multiple checks to fetch all roles if( isset ( $roles_and_caps[$role_or_cap] ) and $roles_and_caps[$role_or_cap] === true ) { return true; } } 
if(current_user_can('administrator')){ code... } You can also just create a new user object:
$user = new WP_User( $user_id ); if ( ! empty( $user->roles ) && is_array( $user->roles ) && in_array( 'Some_role', $user->roles ) ) { return true; } Not sure what version get_user_roles_by_user_id was removed in, but it's no longer an available function.
Here is a function that accepts a user and role for greater flexibility:
function my_has_role($user, $role) { $roles = $user->roles; return in_array($role, (array) $user->roles); } if(my_has_role($user, 'some_role')) { //do stuff } If your site happens to be using WooCommerce, you can simply use:
wc_current_user_has_role( $role ); If not, you can just create the function yourself by copying the way WooCommerce does it (combining wc_current_user_has_role() and wc_user_has_role()):
/** * Checks if the current user has a role. * * @param string $role The role. * @return bool */ function mysite_current_user_has_role( $role ) { /** @var null|WP_User $user */ $user = wp_get_current_user(); if ( ! is_object( $user ) ) { $user = get_userdata( $user ); } if ( ! $user || ! $user->exists() ) { return false; } return in_array( $role, $user->roles, true ); } This is old post but here is one universal function what working on the all WordPress versions.
if(!function_exists('is_user')): function is_user ($role=NULL, $user_id=NULL) { if(empty($user_id)){ $user = wp_get_current_user(); } else { if(is_numeric($user_id) && $user_id == (int)$user_id) { $user = get_user_by('id', (int)$user_id); } else if(is_string($user_id) && $email = sanitize_email($user_id)) { $user = get_user_by('email', $email); } else { return false; } } if(!$user) return false; return in_array( $role, (array)$user->roles, true ) !== false; } endif; With this function you can search logged in user by role or by user ID/email. Also accept user roles array.
