wp_roles

Wordpress 1.6 introduced role-based user management. wp_roles global variable stores the different roles Wordpress user can have. It is an instance of class WP_Roles defined in [wordpress root folder]/wp-includes/capabilities.php and is set in [wordpress root folder]/wp-settings.php.

Ryan Boren has a detailed post regarding this. WP_Roles provides following methods:

• WP_Roles(): the constructor
• add_role($role, $display_name, $capabilities=''): adds specified role
• remove_role($role): removes specified role
• add_cap($role, $cap, $grant = true): adds specified capability to the specified role
• remove_cap($role, $cap): removes specified capability from the specified role
• get_role($role): returns specified role
• get_names(): returns list of names of all the roles
• is_role($role): queries if the specified role exists or not

Plugin authors can work with following wrapper functions that operate on the global variable for roles and capabilities management:

• get_role($role)
• add_role($role, $display_name, $capabilities='')
• remove_role($role)

$role can be any of the capabilities provided by default (check here), e.g., it can be ‘administrator’, ‘contributor’, …

To manage capabilities of a role, following methods of class WP_Role can be used after acquiring a role by using get_role($role):

• WP_Role($role, $capabilities)
• add_cap($cap, $grant = true): adds capabilities
• remove_cap($cap, $grant = true): removes capabilities
• has_cap($cap): queries for a specific capability

WP_User can be use to manage a specific user’s roles and capabilities. $current_user_can($capability) can be used to query the current user’s capabilities.

Back to full list of global variables.

Technorati tags: wp_roles, wp_user, roles, capabilities