How can I add custom user field values to an article?

Question

I have created a custom user field named "Gender".

How can I show this field in an article?

I can only manage to show: username, name, email and User Id

Here is my current Sourcerer code to access the username:

{source} <?php $user = JFactory::getUser(); echo $user->get('name'); {/source}

Answer 1

Okay, I'll explain by using a fictitious value.

You will need to reference the #__users table and the #__fields_values table.

Assuming you are only dealing with logged in users, you will need to acquire the user's id via JFactory::getUser()->id.

Then you will need to know the field_id that the gender value is stored with in the #__fields_values table. For my example below I'll use 28 as the field_id value; if you don't know what the correct field_id value is for your project, you can search for it in the #__fields table the integer that you need to source is in the id column.

By performing an INNER JOIN on the two tables, using two conditions in the WHERE clause and calling for a single value in the result set via loadResult(), you shall have your gender value.

try {
    $db = JFactory::getDbo();
    $user_id = JFactory::getUser()->id;
    $query = $db->getQuery(true)
        ->select("b.value AS gender")
        ->from("#__users a")
        ->innerJoin("#__fields_values b ON a.id = b.item_id")
        ->where(["b.field_id = 28", "b.item_id = " . (int)$user_id]);  // $user_id should already be an integer, but cast to be extra safe
    $db->setQuery($query);
    // JFactory::getApplication()->enqueueMessage($query->dump(), 'info');
    if (!$gender = $db->loadResult()) {
        echo "<p>No Value Found</p>";
    } else {
        echo "<p>$gender</p>";
    }
} catch (Exception $e) {
    JFactory::getApplication()->enqueueMessage("Query Syntax Error: " . $e->getMessage(), 'error');  // don't show $e->getMessage() to public
}

p.s. if you don't want to hardcode the "28" into your query, you can perform a dynamic lookup of the number, but that will require another JOIN with the #__fields table -- this is not likely to worth the effort in most cases.