Adding Custom User Permissions to Your Plugin
Posted on 16th June 2023
As a WordPress plugin developer, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to add custom user permissions to your plugin. This can be a tricky task, as there are many different ways to approach it. In this article, we will discuss the best way to add custom user permissions to your plugin.
Creating a New User Role
The first thing you need to do is create a new user role. This can be done by adding the following code to your plugin:
true,
‘edit_posts’ => true,
‘delete_posts’ => true,
) );
?>
This will create a new user role called “My Plugin Role” with the following capabilities:
- read
- edit_posts
- delete_posts
If you need to add more capabilities to this role, you can do so by adding them to the array in the code above.
Assigning a User to the New Role
Once you have created the new role, you need to assign a user to it. This can be done by adding the following code to your plugin:
add_role( $role );
}
?>
This will assign the user with the ID of 1 to the “My Plugin Role” role.
Adding a Capability to the New Role
Once you have created the new role and assigned a user to it, you need to add a capability to the role. This can be done by adding the following code to your plugin:
add_cap( $capability );
}
?>
This will add the “edit_posts” capability to the “My Plugin Role” role.
Removing a Capability from the New Role
If you need to remove a capability from the new role, you can do so by adding the following code to your plugin:
remove_cap( $capability );
}
?>
This will remove the “edit_posts” capability from the “My Plugin Role” role.
In the previous article, we discussed how to add custom user permissions to your plugin. In this article, we will discuss how to add a custom user role to your plugin.
A custom user role is useful if you want to give certain users access to your plugin’s features, but not all users. For example, you may want to give administrators full access to your plugin, but only give editors the ability to view and edit certain settings.
Adding a custom user role is relatively simple. First, you need to add a new role using the add_role() function. This function takes two arguments: the role’s name and an array of capabilities.
true,
‘edit_posts’ => true,
‘edit_myplugin_settings’ => true,
) );
}
add_action( ‘init’, ‘myplugin_add_role’ );
?>
In the example above, we are adding a new role called “MyPlugin Editor”. This role will have the following capabilities:
read – Allows the user to read posts
edit_posts – Allows the user to edit posts
edit_myplugin_settings – Allows the user to edit MyPlugin settings
Of course, you can add any capabilities you like to the role. For a complete list of capabilities, see the WordPress codex.
Once you have added the role, you can then assign it to users using the WordPress admin interface. Go to Users > Add New User and select the “MyPlugin Editor” role from the “Role” dropdown.
As you can see, adding a custom user role is a simple process. This can be a useful way to control which users have access to your plugin’s features.
When you’ve finished adding your custom user permissions, you need to add them to your plugin so that they’re available to be assigned to users. To do this, you need to use the add_cap() function. The add_cap() function takes two arguments:
The first argument is the user role that you want to add the capability to.
The second argument is the capability name.
For example, to add the custom user permission ‘edit_posts’ to the ‘Administrator’ role, you would use the following code:
You can also use the add_cap() function to add capabilities to more than one user role at a time. To do this, you need to pass an array of roles as the first argument, and the capability name as the second argument. For example, the following code would add the ‘edit_posts’ capability to the ‘Administrator’ and ‘Editor’ roles:
Once you’ve added your custom user permissions to your plugin, you need to make sure that they’re actually being used. The easiest way to do this is to add a check for the capability to the appropriate places in your code. For example, if you have a custom ‘edit_posts’ capability, you would need to check for this capability before allowing a user to edit a post.
The following code shows an example of how you might do this:
As you can see, the current_user_can() function is used to check whether the current user has a particular capability. This function takes a capability name as its only argument. If the user has the capability, the function will return true. Otherwise, it will return false.
You can also use the current_user_can() function to check whether a user has more than one capability. To do this, you need to pass an array of capability names as the function’s only argument. For example, the following code would check whether the current user has both the ‘edit_posts’ and ‘delete_posts’ capabilities:
