Passing Wordpress $current_user data to be used in embbebed javascript to pre-populate form fields

Question

First off I just wanted to say that this is my first question on StackOverflow, so I want to apologize now since I will probably make some mistakes writing this.

So I got a wordpress website with user login feature and I'm offering support through the Zendesk Web Widget which basically is a support contact form. I'm trying to pre-populate the Display Name & Email fields in the support form with the current logged-in user information.

Throught my research, I found that Wordpress already has a function for this : get_currentuserinfo(), and that I could pass the data to javascript by adding this to my functions.php child theme :

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;
     }
}

And by using echo get_user('displayname'); to use the display name in javascript.

Source : http://www.devdevote.com/cms/wordpress-hacks/get_user

So I made some attempts with it, but none worked out. I tried these :

Attempt 1 :

<script>
    var $wpName = <?php echo get_user('displayname') ?>;
    var $wpEmail = <?php echo get_user('email') ?>;

    zE(function() {
        zE.identify({
            name: $wpName,
            email: $wpEmail
        });

    });
</script>

Attempt 2 :

<script>
    zE(function() {
        zE.identify({
            name: <?php echo get_user('displayname') ?>,
            email: <?php echo get_user('email') ?>
        });
    });
</script>

Attempt 3 :

<script>
    var $wpName = $current_user->user_firstname;
    var $wpEmail = $current_user->user_email;

    zE(function() {
        zE.identify({
            name: <?php echo get_user('displayname') ?>,
            email: <?php echo get_user('email') ?>
        });
    });
</script>

Does anyone out here have an idea or just a clue on how to to do this ? I've been struggling all day trying to make this work, reading about 20 to 30 threads on the subject, but none had a working solution for me..

P.S. Once again I'm sorry if I made a mistake posting here or if I didn't write out my question well, this is my first time !

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:30

Turns out I figured out a better way to do this, thanks to Erik Westlund here on StackOverflow

It wasn't working because PHP inside my javascript code wasn't processed, so any echo statement would result in a failure. So I had to turn myself to another solution : json_encode()

So with just these few line of codes added to a new page template file, I was able to make it work :

<?php global $current_user;
get_currentuserinfo();
$user_name = $current_user->display_name;
$user_email = $current_user->user_email;
?>

<script type="text/javascript">
var username = <?php echo json_encode($user_name) ?> ;
var useremail = <?php echo json_encode($user_email) ?> ;
</script>

Then I just had to use it in my javascript like this :

zE(function() {
    zE.identify({
        name: username,
        email: useremail
    });
});

Hopefully this can be useful for somebody in the future !

Adding a note here for future reference: get_currentuserinfo() is deprecated since WordPress version 4.5.0. Use wp_get_current_user() instead. https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/wp_get_current_user/ — Nefeline, Aug 29 '18 at 18:06

Passing Wordpress $current_user data to be used in embbebed javascript to pre-populate form fields

1 Answers1