Question

Global $user;

$items = field_get_items('user', $user, 'field_patientid', $user->language);

I have a field on user entity and I always get a value of FALSE in my debug.

In my database I have the correct entity type which is user. Why am I not getting any values?

I am able to pull up value using:

$user_fields->field_patientid['und']['0']['value'];

Why will the above mentioned statement not work?

Answer 1

If you look at the code for field_get_items(), you’ll notice that the field information you’re looking for needs to already be in the $user object in order for it to be returned by the function.

But global $user does not provide the field data.

From http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/developer%21globals.php/global/user/7#comment-13744

The global user object contains some basic data from Drupal core. It
does not automatically include data from other modules, including the
core profile module. To get all data in the user object, you need to
do a full user_load().