Title: Plugin author: Having problems with capabilities
Last modified: August 19, 2016

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# Plugin author: Having problems with capabilities

 *  [shiv379](https://wordpress.org/support/users/shiv379/)
 * (@shiv379)
 * [18 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-author-having-problems-with-capabilities/)
 * Hi all!
    I’m writing my first plugin and I am trying to add in capabilities so
   the functionality can be restricted to certain roles, however no matter where
   I put the line: `if ( $user->has_cap('edit_resource_links') )` it breaks the 
   plugin!
 * I’d also like to know if there’s a quick way to remove all capabilities matching
   a certain name from *every role*, as a cleanup exercise. Is this possible without
   looping through all roles manually?
 * Does anyone know any good tutes on using capabilities in plugins? I’ve had a 
   look around but the documentation on this is sparse!
 * ~Shiv

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

 *  Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/)
 * (@otto42)
 * WordPress.org Admin
 * [18 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-author-having-problems-with-capabilities/#post-682906)
 * Define what you mean by “breaks the plugin”. What, exactly, does it do?
 * Also, is $user defined? How did you get the $user variable?
 * If you want to remove a cap from all the users, you have to go through all the
   users and call remove_cap on each of them. You’d do that sorta like this:
 *     ```
       $users = get_users_of_blog();
       foreach ($users as $user) {
       $wpuser = new WP_User($user->user_id);
       $wpuser->remove_cap('whatever_cap');
       }
       ```
   
 * Or maybe you wanted to remove all of a given users capabilities entirely? That
   would be easier:
 *     ```
       $wpuser = new WP_User($some_user_id);
       $wpuser->remove_all_caps();
       ```
   
 *  Thread Starter [shiv379](https://wordpress.org/support/users/shiv379/)
 * (@shiv379)
 * [18 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-author-having-problems-with-capabilities/#post-682952)
 * Thanks for the reply 🙂
 * I had thought that $user was a global variable defined by WP for the current 
   user, I’m guessing that’s not the case?
    By breaks the plugin I mean the php 
   chokes and the page doesn’t load. I’m guessing now that that’s because of the
   $user issue tho. What’s the best way to check if the current user has a cap?
 * Thanks for your advice on the loop to remove the cap from all users, I’ll give
   that a go!
 * ~Shiv
 *  Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/)
 * (@otto42)
 * WordPress.org Admin
 * [18 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-author-having-problems-with-capabilities/#post-683046)
 * Nope, $user is not a global.
 * If you want to operate on the current user, you can do this:
 *     ```
       $user = wp_get_current_user();
       $user->do_whatever();
       ```
   
 * And then you can do stuff like I showed above.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)

The topic ‘Plugin author: Having problems with capabilities’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [capabilities](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/capabilities/)
 * [Coding](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/coding/)

 * 3 replies
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/)
 * Last activity: [18 years, 4 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-author-having-problems-with-capabilities/#post-683046)
 * Status: not resolved

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