The problem

WordPress have a built in function called get_currentuserinfo. It’s can be used like this example.

global $current_user;
get_currentuserinfo();
echo $current_user->user_login;

A global variable is set. It calls a function to get the user information. It then echos the username. The code is not as short and easy as it could be.

The solution

I created a function that returns a value depending of the input type. Put the function into your functions.php in your theme folder.

function get_user($type = 'ID')
{
     global $current_user;
     get_currentuserinfo();

     switch ($type)
     {
          case 'ID':
               return $current_user->ID;
               break;
          case 'displayname':
               return $current_user->display_name;
               break;
          case 'username':
               return $current_user->user_login;
               break;
          case 'firstname':
               return $current_user->user_firstname;
               break;
          case 'lastname':
               return $current_user->user_lastname;
               break;
          case 'level':
               return $current_user->user_level;
               break;
          case 'email':
               return $current_user->user_email;
               break;
          default:
               return;
     }
}

The function call

Call the function inside the post loop somewhere in your theme. The example below prints out all the current user information.

echo get_user('ID');
echo get_user('displayname');
echo get_user('username');
echo get_user('firstname');
echo get_user('lastname');
echo get_user('level');
echo get_user('email');

If the input type is not sent it will return the category ID, as default.

Improvements

Do you have any ideas, bugs, features or anything else to improve the code? Write a comment and I’ll look into it.