Question 165974 in Wordpress Question posted in
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Why isn’t get_the_author_meta() working when id field isn’t specified? #WordPress

I’m trying to simply display the name and description of the post author on my single.php page through the get_the_author_meta() function but I can only get it to return a value when I fill the id field with a number what is not ideal as the author changes depending on the post. I really don’t understand why wordpress isn’t getting the current post author’s id by default. Can someone help me?

Here’s the code I’m using

<div class="col-8 col-md-10">
        <?php $id=get_the_author_meta('ID'); echo $id ?>//getting the author's id this way doesn't work
        <h2><?php echo get_the_author_meta('nickname',1);?></h2>//this works but only because I filled the id field with a valid number
        <p><?php echo get_the_author_meta('user_description') ?></p>//this doesn't workalso
    </div>
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2

Answers


  1. Chosen as BEST ANSWER
    0

    Managed to solve it using get_post_field( 'post_author' ). I'm not in the Loop but in a regular post so I needed to use this function to get the author's id and from that I managed to get the the rest working

    Here's the code

    <div class="col-8 col-md-10">
        <?php $id=get_post_field( 'post_author' )?>
        <h2><?php echo get_the_author_meta('first_name',$id).' '.get_the_author_meta('last_name',$id);?></h2>
        <p><?php echo get_the_author_meta('user_description',$id) ?></p>
    </div>

  2. 0

    From the docs on get_the_author_meta():

    If used within The Loop, the user ID need not be specified, it defaults to current post author. A user ID must be specified if used outside The Loop.

    Based on your sharing that it won’t work without the user ID, I suspect you are not inside The Loop. Without seeing more of your single.php template, it’s hard to say, so if you can share more, that would help.

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