As part of a recent Sensei update we added some custom capabilities to the editor role, but we discovered that some people have deleted that role from the database as a way of cleaning up unused data on their sites. This meant that our add_cap() calls were causing fatal errors for these sites.
While that is admittedly a fringe case, it’s useful to know how to check if a role exists in the database before you go about manipulating it. It’s actually really easy to do, but WordPress doesn’t have a handy role_exists() function or something similar, so it requires a small amount of custom coding.
Here’s how we added a function like this and solved the problem for ourselves along with the basic usage:
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| function role_exists( $role ) { | |
| if( ! empty( $role ) ) { | |
| return $GLOBALS['wp_roles']->is_role( $role ); | |
| } | |
| return false; | |
| } |
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| if( role_exists( 'editor' ) ) { | |
| // The 'editor' role exists! | |
| } |