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1. shahar
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Hi, I'm writing a plugin that will allow authors to be assigned to categories manually - allowing authors to be defined in groups. Assignment will be done on the category editing page by checking-off authors from a list. There will be 100± authors and 7-12 categories.

   I'll be needing to display a list of authors for a particular category and, separately, to display the categories to which an author is assigned.

   As I see it there are 2 options for the table structure I'd use:

   1) Create a table which stores an array of assigned author id's to a category and then add a column to the wp_users table which will store an array of category id's for each user.

   2) Create a table that has a column for each category and a row for each author. These would be added dynamically whenever a category was edited to assign authors.

   I'd be really grateful for any guidance or suggestions, perhaps I'm missing some important info? I'm relatively new to WordPress...

   Thanks in advance!

2. MichaelH
   Volunteer
   Posted 2 years ago #

   What about using the usermeta table?

3. shahar
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Option #1 using the wp_usermeta table instead of wp_user? That's certainly an option...
   Any advice as to what's best?

4. MichaelH
   Volunteer
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Using wp_usermeta means not having to modify any tables.

   Just for consideration of how plugins handle 'user fields':
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cimy-user-extra-fields/
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/register-plus/

5. shahar
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Thanks for the references :)

6. shahar
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Wouldn't using usermeta make querying for all users assigned to a category cumbersome?

7. MichaelH
   Volunteer
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Not sure if this is considered cumbersome...
   

   <?php
   //display all users that have "user_category" of "6"
   $meta_key = 'user_category';
   $meta_value ='6';
   $user_ids = $wpdb->get_col($wpdb->prepare("SELECT user_id FROM $wpdb->usermeta WHERE meta_key = %s AND meta_value = %s", $meta_key,$meta_value));
   if ($user_ids) {
   foreach ($user_ids as $user_id) {
   $curuser = get_userdata($user_id);
   echo '<p>--User nicename: '.$curuser->user_nicename .', display Name: '. $curuser->display_name . ', link to author posts <a href="' . $author_post_url . '" title="' . sprintf( __( "Posts by %s" ), $curuser->user_nicename ) . '" ' . '>' . $curuser->user_nicename .'</a></p>';
   }
   }
   ?>

8. shahar
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   So I'd store an array of group numbers for each user?
   That sounds good :)

9. shahar
   Member
   Posted 2 years ago #

   Oh, I forgot to clarify before that users may well be members of more than one group.

10. shahar
    Member
    Posted 2 years ago #

    Using FIND_IN_SET in the query this method seems to be just fine.
    Thanks for your guidance :D

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