# (Retired) Use an ID in a custom user field to link to a user's external profile

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/retired-use-an-id-in-a-custom-user-field-to-link-to-a-users-external-profile/41218>\
**Category:** Site Management\
**Created:** [March 17, 2016, 5:43pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retired-use-an-id-in-a-custom-user-field-to-link-to-a-users-external-profile/41218 "2016-03-17T17:43:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 37

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**Author:** ![simon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/simon/32/339122_2.png) [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)\
**Post date:** [June 7, 2017, 2:02am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retired-use-an-id-in-a-custom-user-field-to-link-to-a-users-external-profile/41218/37 "2017-06-07T02:02:18Z")

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~~My solution seems wrong.~~ I’ll look at this some more when I get a chance.

Edit:  
I was having some trouble understanding why this works, but after looking through the code a bit more this seems to make sense as a way of setting custom fields through SSO.

Create a user field on Discourse in the way outlined in the OP and then go to your profile as an admin and add a value (any value) to it. You can then go to the Discourse rails console and enter:

`UserCustomField.all`

A list of all the user\_custom\_fields on your site will be returned. It will be made up of one or more entries that look something like this:

`#<UserCustomField:0x007fa02bb39d18 id: 18, user_id: 1, name: "user_field_8", value: "test value", created_at: Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:48:10 UTC +00:00, updated_at: Wed, 07 Jun 2017 01:48:10 UTC +00:00>] `  
Look for the entry that has a `value` attribute that matches the value you just saved in your custom field. Copy the name of that field into a function on your WordPress site that is something like this:

```php
add_filter( 'wpdc_sso_params', 'my_namespace_set_discourse_custom_field', 10, 2 );
function my_namespace_set_discourse_custom_field( $sso_params, $user ) {
    $sso_params['custom.user_field_7'] = $user->ID;

    return $sso_params;
}

```

To use the code in the OP, replace the name value (‘User Profile’) in this line:  
`const externalUserIdField = siteUserFields.filterBy('name', 'User Profile')[0]`  
with whatever you have called the field you added on Discourse. This is the part of the code that I wasn’t understanding, but it makes more sense after looking at this: [discourse/app/controllers/users\_controller.rb at main · discourse/discourse · GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/controllers/users_controller.rb#L99)

Unless there is a better way to do this, I’ll add it to the [WP Discourse Plugin Tips and Tricks](https://meta.discourse.org/t/wp-discourse-plugin-tips-and-tricks/50757) topic.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/retired-use-an-id-in-a-custom-user-field-to-link-to-a-users-external-profile/41218)._