Check if User Exists by ID in WordPress

WordPress has a built in username_exists() function to check if a user exists by their username, but there isn’t a similar function for checking if a user exists by their user ID. I’ve seen posts online where folks suggest a way of doing that with a direct database query using $wpdb. While that works, the function below is a bit simpler and uses a native WordPress function to accomplish the same thing.

You can pass it the user ID to check and it will return true if that user exists, or false if not.

      
        <?php
      
        /**
      
         * @param  int $user_id User ID.
      
         *
      
         * @return bool Whether the user exists.
      
         */
      
        function does_user_exist( int $user_id ) : bool {
      
            return (bool) get_users( [ 'include' => $user_id, 'fields' => 'ID' ] );
      
        }

view raw check-if-user-exists-wordpress.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Written by Kellen Mace, who lives in Rochester Hills, MI and builds cool stuff on the web. About Kellen // Follow him on Twitter →

	<?php

	/**
	* @param int $user_id User ID.
	*
	* @return bool Whether the user exists.
	*/
	function does_user_exist( int $user_id ) : bool {
	return (bool) get_users( [ 'include' => $user_id, 'fields' => 'ID' ] );
	}