Updating a Custom Field Value

Is there a way to update the value of a s2member custom field? Here is my scenario:

I’m trying to run an election for our members organization. I have a custom fields that indicates if they have cast their vote already or not (0 or 1). At the beginning of the election, everyone’s flag will be set to “0”.

When they go to the voting page, they will see a blank ballot if their flag is set to “0”, or a message that says they’ve already voted if the flag is a “1”.

If they haven’t voted, they do so by submitting a form. At this point, I want to rewrite their custom field to be a “1” instead of a “0”.

How do I do this? Thanks!

Is there a way to update the value of a s2member custom field?

Sure, but it’s a bit complicated. To update an s2Member Custom Field you have to update an array in your WordPress Usermeta tables through PHP. The value’s row is your WordPress prefix + s2member_custom_fields. Here’s an example of how you would update a Custom Field with the slug country:

$custom_fields = get_user_option('s2member_custom_fields');
$custom_fields['country'] = $newcountry;
update_user_option($user->ID, 's2member_custom_fields', $custom_fields);

Thanks Bruce. That doesn’t look too complicated. I may not get back to it for a couple of days. Just wanted to acknowledge getting the info.

Well, I got to working on it tonight. But it isn’t doing the update. Here’s my code:

$voted = 1;
$custom_fields = get_user_option('aaa_s2member_custom_fields');
$custom_fields['district_voted'] = $voted;
update_user_option($user->ID, 'aaa_s2member_custom_fields', $custom_fields);

The first three lines of code work correctly (confirmed by echo and print_r).
The last line executes, but gives me no error, nor does it update the custom field “district_voted”.
Any thoughts?

$voted = 1;
$custom_fields = get_user_option('aaa_s2member_custom_fields');
$custom_fields['district_voted'] = $voted;
update_user_option($user->ID, 'aaa_s2member_custom_fields', $custom_fields);

You don't need to put the prefix in here if you're using update_user_option(). WordPress does this automatically. Try this:

$voted = 1;
$custom_fields = get_user_option('s2member_custom_fields');
$custom_fields['district_voted'] = $voted;
update_user_option($user->ID, 's2member_custom_fields', $custom_fields);

Still no luck. Again, the $custom_fields array looks fine before and after the change to the one field. But the last line does not seem to write it to the database.

I would only add that you should be specific about which User you’re pulling data for here, by passing the $user->ID to the get_user_option() call also; as seen below.

$voted = 1;
$custom_fields = get_user_option('s2member_custom_fields', $user->ID);
$custom_fields['district_voted'] = $voted;
update_user_option($user->ID, 's2member_custom_fields', $custom_fields);

Thanks for the added input. I wish I could say it is now working, but unfortunately it still is not updating the values. It’s like it is ignoring that last line of code. It must be something else. Perhaps a permission problem somewhere? Any other thoughts or ideas? I appreciate the help.

This probably has more to do with the larger picture.
~ Where/how is this code integrated? It is attached to a hook?

I use the plug-in Exec-PHP. It allows me to use PHP code in any page or post. I’ve never had any issue with it until this particular one.

And what page is it on? Does it come before or after anything else that processes profile fields?

There is no other processing custom fields with my PHP code on this page. But I suppose something could be happening behind the scenes. The page is a protected page that you can’t access.

Yes, that’s what I would start looking at because your code is rock solid there. Something is happening after this code, and it’s probably tricking you into thinking there is something wrong with that code snippet. It looks good :-) It’s most likely something else that comes after this.

Thanks again for your help. I think my next step will be to pull this PHP code out of the WP page and have it be a standalone PHP page that gets called from a page. Hopefully that will solve the problem.

I finally figured it out!!! It was related to the ID field after all. I changed the code to this:

$voted = "1";
$custom_fields = get_user_option('s2member_custom_fields', get_current_user_id());
$custom_fields['district_voted'] = $voted;
update_user_option(get_current_user_id(), 's2member_custom_fields', $custom_fields);