SocialEngine Tutorial – Getting the current user’s id and data

When you load any view inside your website you should always have an object named $viewer().
Here are some useful things you can find out in your view using the viewer object;

Get the current viewier’s Id

$this->viewer()->getIdentity();

Get the current viewier’s name

$this->viewer()->getTitle();

Get the current viewier’s profile URL

$this->viewer()->getHref();

Check if current user is an admin (return is either 1 or 0, true or false)

$this->viewer()->isAdmin();

If you want to be able to do the same thing within your controller rather than your view you can also use

Get current viewer’s identity

Engine_Api::_()->user()->getViewer()->getIdentity();

On a side note if you ever need to know whats being loaded in your view just print_r out the view object. However I find it extremely useful to call get_class_methods() on the object so that you can see what you can do with it;

echo '<pre>';
print_r(get_class_methods($this->viewer()));
echo '

‘;

(get rid of the backslash, had to include it to stop my pre tags messing up!