WP_User::__set doesn't persist custom fields as it claims

[quickshiftin]

Looking through WP_User in version 3.5.1 (verified against svn trunk too), the magic methods __get and __set supposedly read and write from custom fields, per their comment blocks.

	/**
	 * Magic method for accessing custom fields
	 *
	 * @since 3.3.0
	 */
	function __get( $key ) {
        // ...

	/**
	 * Magic method for setting custom fields
	 *
	 * @since 3.3.0
	 */
	function __set( $key, $value ) {
        // ...

And sure enough, if you look through the method bodies __get will make a call to get_user_meta

$value = get_user_meta( $this->ID, $key, true );

However reading through the body of __set , it never calls add_user_meta or update_user_meta , but has the misleading comment that it's "for setting custom fields...".

Seems to me like it's missing a critical line:

update_user_meta($this->ID, $key, $value);

Am I missing something, or is this a bug?

[quickshiftin]

capabilities.diff

[scribu]

I think the bug here is that the description for __set() is vague. It should explicitly state that it does _not_ save custom fields to the DB.

It would be interesting to add a save() method, which would go through all the fields and save the changed ones.

[quickshiftin]

Hmm, good to know.

It does feel a bit lop-sided reading from custom fields, but not storing to them. To me the simple update_user_meta feels appropriate, but a batch write would be nice. It would have to read any fields that were set but not yet read, but perhaps the read could also be batched.

Another neat idea for it would be to call it in the destructor so client code could just assume the write will be done automatically.

Thanks for looking at it.

[johnpbloch]

Update doc block to clarify functionality of WP_User::set()

[johnpbloch]

Added a patch to clarify in the documentation that __set doesn't actually save the data to the database. It would be great to look into a save method that actually applies those changes, but I think that would definitely have to be a new ticket.

[wonderboymusic]

In 34379:

Users: clarify the docs for WP_User::__set to make it clear that it does save data in the database.

Props johnpbloch.
Fixes #24255.