I have been searching high and low for a way to count the amount of results from a get_users query.

Most of what I found is to count the total number of posts in a post query, but nothing for counting the total number of users in the get_users query.

Can someone point it out for me? Thanks a lot.

I have been searching high and low for a way to count the amount of results from a get_users query.

Most of what I found is to count the total number of posts in a post query, but nothing for counting the total number of users in the get_users query.

Can someone point it out for me? Thanks a lot.

• query
• users
• count

4 Answers 4

when you use get_users() it retrieves an array of users matching the criteria given in $args which means you can simply use PHP's count() function e.g:

$users = get_users($args);
$number_of_users = count($users);

Bainternet's answer gives you the number of users for one query and doesn't help if you need multiple pages of users.

If you have thousands of users that's not what you want. You can use WP_User_Query much the same way you use WP_Query for posts. It's very similar to get_users -- same arguments, but different features and usage.

Most importantly you can get the total number of users who match your criteria without actually returning all of the results (and potentially hitting memory limits).

Usage

$user_query = new WP_User_Query(array(
    'number' => 15,
    'paged' => 1
));

$users = $user_query->get_results(); // array of WP_User objects, like get_users

$total = $user_query->get_total(); // int, total number of users (not just the first page)

Examples:

echo $users[0]->get('display_name');
// "Radley Sustaire"

echo count($users);
// "15" (count from the first page of users)

echo $user_query->get_total();
// "86" (count from all pages of users)

$num_pages = ceil( $user_query->get_total() / 15 );
// "6" (number of pages of users. 15 is the "users per page" from the first example)
//     (* do NOT use count($users) in place of 15. try a separate $per_page variable)

Here is how I implemented this:

function getUsers($args = array(), $count = false)
{
    // Default behaviour is to return full user information
    $method = 'get_results';

    // If count is true then change the WP_User_Query method
    // and limit the fields SELECT'd to 'ID' to speed up the query
    if($count === true) {
        $method = 'get_total';
        $args['fields'] = 'ID';
    }

    $userQuery = new WP_User_Query($userArgs);

    return call_user_func(array($userQuery, $method));
}

Usage:

$args = array('role' => author,
              'meta_key' => 'foo',
              'meta_value' => 'bar'
        );

// Returns (array) WP_User objects (a la get_users())
$users = getUsers($args);

// Returns (int) number of of users matched by $args
$count = getUsers($args, true);

Aside from being more compact / reusable than $users = get_users($args); $count = count($users); it ensures that if all you want is the total number then it will fetch the minimum required from the DB to achieve this.

Try the function below to get the count of all users, and user counts based on user roles, in an array:

count_users();

Output comes like this:

Array (
    [total_users] => 32
    [avail_roles] => Array (
        [administrator] => 1
        [subscriber] => 28
        [sub_administrator] => 1
        [editor] => 2
    )
)

More information can be found here.