Question

I’m trying to implement twitter like followers function in my website. I have a function like this in my plugin:

function current_profile_user_id() {
   return "current profile user id";
}
function button( $args = '' ) {
        $defaults = array(
            'leaderid'   => current_profile_user_id(),
            'followerid' => 'logged in user id'
        );
        return "HTML button";
    }

The only way I can pass the current profile user id value, its from the user profile page by using function arguments.

Let’s say the $currentuser->ID returns the current profile page user value but this variable only available in the profile page.

Can anyone tell me how to pass that value to the function current_profile_user_id(), store that value and return the html button?

Please note: Many of my other functions too uses the value returned by current_profile_user_id().

Answer 1

You had better save the value in the session. A function may rely on the global scope, but that is not saved between pages.

You could do something like

function currentProfile($profile = False)
{
    if ($profile)
        $_SESSION['curr_profile'] = $profile;
    else
        if (isset($_SESSION['curr_profile']))
            return $_SESSION['curr_profile'];
    return $profile;
}

function current_profile_user_id()
{
    return currentProfile()->ID;
}

and then, as soon as you can, save the profile in session

currentProfile($currentuser);

…ought to work. This way, you can change the persistence of curr_profile if need be, without having to revisit all of your code.

on a maybe-related note

(Not being very clear on what you’re attempting to do and how, I hope this may turn out to be useful)

So you have a list of users and want to display a ‘follow’ template for each. The list of users is retrieved from some sort of database, so you’ll have something like

while($user = $st->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC))
{
    // Populate the template

    // Append template to display code
}

In that template you will have something like:

<a href="follow.php?id={$user['id']}">Follow {$user['name']}</a>

or maybe an AJAX call to add that user to the logged user’s follow-list without refreshing the page. Anyway, there will be a server page invoked, and that page will receive a session cookie and the ID the user selected.

So that page will have to note the new following/unfollowing, and it will have everything it needs to do so:

1. The ID of the user to be followed, in $_REQUEST['id']
2. All data of the follower, in $_SESSION.

It could then execute, for example, a query such as

 INSERT IGNORE INTO followers (follower, followee) VALUES ($id1, $id2);

to persist the information.