WordPress: wp_signon() – $current_user is not populated

Happy Christmas and holidays!

I would be out in the sun if there was any! But since it’s raining I’m doing a bit of WordPress development for a project I’m working on.

The wp_signon() function logs a user in but for some reason after doing so the global user variables such as $current_user and $user_ID are not populated until the page is refreshed and calling get_currentuserinfo() doesn’t populate them. The is_user_logged_in() function also returns false. I think the problem has something to do with the cookie authentication process.

There is however a solution to the problem and it doesn’t involve refreshing the page. When you call wp_signon() it returns a user object if the sign-on was successful, so we do have all the user info we need, it’s just not available in the standard global way. To fix this we just need to call the wp_set_current_user() specifying the id of user object which wp_signon() returned.

To demonstrate, here’s an example of creating a user, logging them in and submitting a post all in one page refresh.

<pre escaped="true" lang="php"><?php
_my_newuser('joe','itsasecret','joe@joe.com','Joe');

_my_user_login('joe','itsasecret');

_my_commit_post($newpost);

_my_current_user();

//Register a new user
function _my_newuser($username,$password,$email,$nickname)
{
	global $wpdb;
	$user_login = $wpdb->escape( $username );
	$user_pass = $password;
	$nickname = $nickname;
	$user_email = $username;
	$userdata = compact('user_login', 'user_email', 'user_pass', 'first_name','nickname' );
	return wp_insert_user($userdata);
}

//Log a user in and set them as current user
function _my_user_login($username,$password)
{
	$creds = array();
	$creds['user_login'] = $username;
	$creds['user_password'] = $password;
	$creds['remember'] = true;
	$user = wp_signon( $creds, false );
	wp_set_current_user($user->ID); //Here is where we update the global user variables
	return $user;
}

//Commits a new post to the DB
function _my_commit_post($postdata)
{
	global $user_ID;
	$new_post = array(
		'post_title' => $postdata->title,
		'post_content' => $postdata->description,
		'post_status' => 'publish',
		'post_date' => date('Y-m-d H:i:s'),
		'post_author' => $user_ID,
		'post_type' => 'post',
		'post_category' => array(0),
		'tags_input' => $postdata->tags
	);
	$post_id = wp_insert_post($new_post,true);
}

//Print info about the user who is now logged in
function _my_current_user()
{
	global $current_user,$user_ID;

	if(is_user_logged_in())
	{
		echo '<br />User Logged in ok<br />';
		echo 'User ID is: '.$user_ID.'<br />';
		echo 'User login is: '.$current_user->user_login.'<br />';
	}
	else
		echo 'No user is logged in< br/>';
}

?>

Of Course you might want some error handling in there! 😉 And did you notice the new syntax highlighting plug-in? Neat ay?