Sort users by meta key value even if meta key not present for all users

Question

Sort users by meta key value even if meta key not present for all users

Line One

2022年5月24日 02:22

Only some users have a specifice meta_key some_metakey associated with their ID. The following args successfully orders users with a specified role by some_metakey but only those with that meta_key.

Can anyone point the direction to change the args to include ALL users with a specified role even if they do not have the some_metakey meta_key?

$args = array(
    'role__in' = 
    [ 
        'role1', 
        'role2', 
        'role3', 
        'role4' 
    ],
    'order' = 'DEC', 
    'meta_key' = 'some_metakey',
    'orderby' = 'meta_value'
);
$users = get_users( $args );

Topic order user-meta sort Wordpress

Category Web

Ismail · Accepted Answer · 2022年5月24日 02:22

WordPress roles are stored in $wpdb->usermeta with wp_capabilities meta key, however, as a serialized array (see maybe_serialize).

So you could actually make a group of meta queries, with OR as the relation, to find users with any role of your 4 defined roles, OR users having a certain meta key and value:

Please note that in you change the roles, make sure to calculate the character length for that role, and place that length after s: characters (e.g; for administrator, the meta value search will be s:13:"administrator";b:1, and s:10:"subscriber";b:1 for subscriber users).

$args = array(
    'meta_query' => [ 
        'relation' => 'OR',
        [
            'key' => 'wp_capabilities',
            'value' => 's:5:"role1";b:1',
            'compare' => 'LIKE',
        ],
        [
            'key' => 'wp_capabilities',
            'value' => 's:5:"role2";b:1',
            'compare' => 'LIKE',
        ],
        [
            'key' => 'wp_capabilities',
            'value' => 's:5:"role3";b:1',
            'compare' => 'LIKE',
        ],
        [
            'key' => 'wp_capabilities',
            'value' => 's:5:"role4";b:1',
            'compare' => 'LIKE',
        ],
        [
            'key' => 'some_metakey',
            'value' => 'YOUR VALUE HERE',
            'compare' => '=', // or any other comparator, see WP_Meta_Query docs
        ],
    ],
    // 'order' => 'DESC', 
    // 'meta_key' => 'some_metakey',
    // 'orderby' => 'meta_value'
);

$users = get_users( $args );

Now for the ordering, that can get difficult - if you do not limit your queries then you could just do a usort order on the result array, otherwise, look into WP_User_Query, they have some hooks to use to manipulate the class state and hence the SQL query.

Sort users by meta key value even if meta key not present for all users

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