Problem: You are working on a site under development and need to programmatically fetch the users' preferred language. You are wondering if this information is stored in the usermeta table. Solution: The preferred language of a user is stored in the usermeta table under the key 'locale'. By default, this value might be empty, indicating that the admin language is set to the site's default. If a specific language is set in the user's profile, it will reflect that particular locale (e.g., English > en_US). Here is a step-by-step approach to fetch this information:
function get_user_preferred_language( $user_id ) {
// Attempt to retrieve the 'locale' meta value for the user
$locale = get_user_meta( $user_id, 'locale', true );
// Check if 'locale' is empty and fall back to WPML's default language if necessary
if ( empty( $locale ) ) {
// Use WPML's default language as a fallback
$locale = apply_filters( 'wpml_default_language', null );
}
return $locale;
}
// Usage example:
$user_id = get_current_user_id();
$user_language = get_user_preferred_language( $user_id );
echo "User's preferred language: " . $user_language;
If this solution does not apply to your case, or if it seems outdated, we recommend checking the related known issues, verifying the version of the permanent fix, and confirming that you have installed the latest versions of themes and plugins. If you still need assistance, please open a new support ticket.
