How to Access Author Meta (get_the_author_meta) in wp_head

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I'm trying to write my own code for populating JSON-LD Schema code (I'd rather not rely on plugins for this).

For Wordpress posts, one of the key schema elements is author data. So I use get_the_author_meta() function to access it.

This works perfectly fine when it fires in the wp_footer action, but comes up empty when firing in wp_head.

I've checked this in the astra theme as well as twentytwentyone theme.

I stole this code just for demonstration purposes, it's twitter OG card and not Schema but its effectively the same. Forgive me but I can't remember what stackoverlow post I found it in.

In functions.php:

function my_twitter_cards() {
    if (is_singular()) {
        global $post;
    $twitter_user = get_the_author_meta('nickname'); #This is the element that works in wp_footer but not in wp_head, all the other fields seem to work.
    $twitter_url = get_permalink();
    $twitter_title = get_the_title();
    $twitter_excerpt = get_the_excerpt();
    $twittercard_image = wp_get_attachment_image_src(get_post_thumbnail_id($post->ID), 'full');
    $twittercard_thumb = $twittercard_image[0];
    if (!$twittercard_thumb) {
        $twittercard_thumb = 'https://www.example.com/default-image.png';
    }
    if ($twitter_user) {
        echo '<meta name="twitter:creator" value="@' . esc_attr($twitter_user) . '" />' . "\n";
    }
    echo '<meta name="twitter:card" value="summary" />' . "\n";
    echo '<meta name="twitter:url" value="' . esc_url($twitter_url) . '" />' . "\n";
    echo '<meta name="twitter:title" value="' . esc_attr($twitter_title) . '" />' . "\n";
    echo '<meta name="twitter:description" value="' . esc_attr($twitter_excerpt) . '" />' . "\n";
    echo '<meta name="twitter:image" value="' . esc_url($twittercard_thumb) . '" />' . "\n";
    echo '<meta name="twitter:site" value="@mhthemes" />' . "\n";
    }
}
add_action('wp_head', 'my_twitter_cards');  #swap this out for wp_footer to see the difference.

My theory was that it couldn't access the loop when called in the header, but that doesn't explain why post-specific data is populating (i.e permalink, title, etc), and not the get_the_author_meta data.

Now I can go with it if I just populate the footer, in this application it would be OK, but some things need to be in the header, so I want to figure out why its not working as expected.

Thank you in advance!

wordpress php
1 Answers

get_the_author_meta() accepts two optional parameters:

get_the_author_meta(string $field = '', int|false $user_id = false)

Where $field is the user field to retrieve (Default value is '') and $user_id is the user ID (Default value is false)

When used within The Loop, the user ID need not be specified, it defaults to the current post author. A user ID must be specified if used outside The Loop.

You can get the current post author ID outside The Loop, and then use it to fetch the desired author field like this:

global $post;
$post_id = $post->ID;
$post_author_id = get_post_field('post_author', $post_id);
$twitter_user = get_the_author_meta('nickname', $post_author_id);

On a side note, the above example uses global $post because you are already using it in your code, otherwise I would use get_queried_object_id() to get the post ID outside of The Loop:

$post_id = get_queried_object_id();

user_70137970
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