How to change a user’s role?

I have custom roles in my setup and I want to be able to automatically change a user’s role thru a function. Say user A has a SUBSCRIBER role, how do I change it to EDITOR? When adding a role we just:

add_role( $role_name , $role_display_name , array( 'read' =>  true,
                                                   'edit_posts' => false,
                                                   'delete_posts' => false, ));

How about changing a role? Is there something like:

change_role($old_role, $new_role);

UPDATE:
I think this one will do:

$wp_user_object = new WP_User($current_user->ID);
$wp_user_object->set_role('editor');

Answers:

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Method 1

See the WP_User class, you can use this to add and remove roles for a user.

EDIT: I really should have provided more information with this answer initially, so i’m adding more information below.

More specifically, a user’s role can be set by creating an instance of the WP_user class, and calling the add_role() or remove_role() methods.

Example

Change a subscribers role to editor

// NOTE: Of course change 3 to the appropriate user ID
$u = new WP_User( 3 );

// Remove role
$u->remove_role( 'subscriber' );

// Add role
$u->add_role( 'editor' );

Hopefully that’s more helpful than my initial response, which wasn’t necessarily as helpful.

Method 2

Just note that there is a simpler way to change the user role which is especially helpful when you do not know the current role of the user: ->set_role()

Example:

// Fetch the WP_User object of our user.
$u = new WP_User( 3 );

// Replace the current role with 'editor' role
$u->set_role( 'editor' );

Method 3

To extrapolate on t31os’s answer you can slap something like this in your functions file if you want to do this programmatically based on a condition

$blogusers = get_users($blogID.'&role=student');

foreach ($blogusers as $user) {

    $thisYear = date('Y-7');
    $gradYear = date(get_the_author_meta( 'graduation_year', $user->ID ).'-7');

    if($gradYear < $thisYear) {
        $u = new WP_User( $user->ID );
        // Remove role
        $u->remove_role( 'student' );

        // Add role
        $u->add_role( 'adult' );
    }
}

Method 4

You can change the role of any user by editing the users profile. No need to add any more code when this option is already built into WordPress.

Or

You could use code to change all current users with the subscriber role to editor:

$current_user = wp_get_current_user();

// Remove role
$current_user->remove_role( 'subscriber' );

// Add role
$current_user->add_role( 'editor' );

Method 5

<?php
$wuser_ID = get_current_user_id();
if ($wuser_ID)
    {
      // NOTE: Of course change 3 to the appropriate user ID
      $u = new WP_User( $wuser_ID );

      // Remove role
      $u->remove_role( 'subscriber' );

      // Add role
      $u->add_role( 'contributor' );
    }
?>

Method 6

There’s a WordPress function for that!

I think it is best to use WordPress functions, if and when they are available.

You can use the wp_insert_user() function, where one of the arguments that you will need to provide is the $userdata[‘role’]. In this argument you can specify the role that you want to change the user into.

Method 7

you have to include the /wp-includes/registration.php, if you use the code as a stand alone script.
Regards
Uwe

Method 8

You can use wp_update_user. Your code shoud be like this:

<?php
    $user_id = 3;
    $new_role = 'editor';

    $result = wp_update_user(array('ID'=>$user_id, 'role'=>$new_role));

    if ( is_wp_error( $result ) ) {
        // There was an error, probably that user doesn't exist.
    } else {
        // Success!
    }
?>

Method 9

I know its a very old Post, but i have found that the roles for users are stored in wp_usermeta table with key wp_capabilities in meta_key column.

If you want to change the user role you can do it by this simple function.

function change_role($id, $new_role){
    GLOBAL $table_prefix;
    if(is_array($new_role)){
        $new_role_array = $new_role;
    }else{
        $new_role_array = array( $new_role => true );
    }
    return update_user_meta($id, $table_prefix.'capabilities', $new_role_array);
}

There is two way to use this function.

If you want to change the role for a single role.

change_role(2, 'editor'); // editor is the new role

Or if you want to add multi roles to the user, use the roles as array in the second parameter.

$roles_array = array('editor' => true, 'administrator' => true); // roles array
change_role(2, $roles_array);

Good luck.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0