General developer forum

Finally figured out how to write data value back into a custom user profile field in the database
This was a sometimes frustrating experience, but in the end I learned a lot! I am putting my findings down here in case anyone else needs to alter the value of one of these fields using php code:

First, my example works on a field called "status" that I added using the

administration-users-accounts-user profile fields

In my case, I intend to have a block that looks at a user's status field, if it is "new" (the default value I set up when a new user if created), then a "welcome aboard" screen is presented with an orientation video, etc. After that first viewing, I want to set the status to "old" so they never have that screen show up again. I tried all sorts of functions, like profile_save_data(), but had problems. Finally just printing all session variables and going over and over again each function, I was able to debug my issue. Deeper inside the profile_save_data function and other related ones is a function called edit_save_data() and also update_record(). I was able to make my own function called save_status() which I documented below. Note that I have all sorts of debug print lines, as well as comments. This was what I just developed, and I will be taking this and refining it for my block next week. However, I left it all in so you can see what is happening. Here is the code:

 function save_status($theuserid, $newstatus) {

 // write a new value for the custom profile field "status" which i manually

 // added for all the users using the administration-users-accounts-user profile fields

 // pass it the userid of the user to change, plus the new text value

 $data = new object();

 $data->userid = $theuserid; // who to do this too

 $data->fieldid = 2; // status happens to be fieldid 2 from the table user_info_data

 // note this could be different depending on other custom fields

 // check the fieldid using the administration database tool

 //$data->id is the record specific field id set below 

 $data->data = $newstatus; // use the text value passed as parameter above

 print "debug - save_status: data->userid= ".$data->userid." data->fieldid= ".$data->fieldid." data->data= ".$data->data."<BR>"; //debug

 // first get the id number of this record from the user_info_data, could be anything 

 if ($dataid = get_field('user_info_data', 'id', 'userid', $data->userid, 'fieldid', $data->fieldid)) {

 // must have gotten the id number of it so now store back to it

 $data->id = $dataid; // store the returned specific id number in the data object

 print "debug - found the data->id = ".$dataid."<BR>"; // debug

 // now update the record with it all

 if (!update_record('user_info_data', $data)) {

 print "debug - there was error with update_record so no save<BR>"; // debug

 return false;

 } else {

 // aok

 return true;

 }

 } else {

 // must not have found any record in the table for that combination

 print "debug - no record was found for that combination so no save<BR>"; // debug

 return false;

 }

 }

That is the function. I called it with the following:

$anewstatus = "old6";
print "Next step is save_status passing it anewstatus= ".$anewstatus." for userid= ".$myid."<BR>";
if (!save_status($myid, $anewstatus)) {
print "save_status failed<BR>";
} else {
print "save_status worked<BR>";
}



I will briefly describe why I think the built-in functions like profile_save_data were not doing it for me. First, I was confused by the built-in session variable $USER, which shows the values for that login session. It cane give you the value of fields such as $USER->firstname or even custom fields like $USER->status; however, this profile_ functions are not directly messing with a $USER variable or one like it. The cross reference has parameters passed to them with names like "newuser", but if you dig deeper you will see how these work. Also, the custom fields are wisely stored in a different table, that is accessed using two tables actually. Use the database add-on module phpmyadmin to get you the really vital database screens that show you all the tables, etc. The tables involved are called user_info_data and user_info_field.

Another stumbling block for me was the fact that those functions all seemed to work around a form that you see when you edit them in teh normal profile edit screen. Well, that confused matters for me. I finally had success when getting down to lower level functions, that BTW were well documented

Also, thank you to everyone who offered hints and encouragement in this post and other related posts I made.

For the begineer who is testing things, the way you run things is put the code in a page that you can call as a web page from your site. I followed some advice on some other forum posts and created a folder in your main moodle folder system. This is at the level of folders such as block and theme. Make a folder there called tests. Put the php you want to test in a file with extension .php, such as custom.php . You may have to change the permissions to rw-rw-r-- to be able to execute it. To run it, go to your site URL and put in the path to the file, like www.afakemoodlesite.com/tests/custom.php

If you are logged in, you will see the results of all the print statements. The log in checking code stops everyone except logged in users so visitors and guests can't see this run. You might dump variables that have passwords and inner workings of your site, which could cause a security risk. I would do this when you have no other users registered, such as when you are building and testing a site. When you are done, you can always rename the file so it doesn't have the .php at the end.

I hope this helps everyone who wants to write a value to a custom field,
Good luck!
Jamie

PS I am attaching my custom.php file, as an example. Note it is still full of commented out tests and other debug stuff, but it will show you a good real-world example.