Customizing user_nicename in wp_users table in wordpress - mysql

Question

By default wordpress will santitize the contents written to user_nicename column in wp_users table. It will remove spaces, some special characters and change uppercase to lowercase. Will it be possible to update user_nicename column without sanitizations?

Answer 1

It is possible using the pre_user_nicename filter. You can read on it here https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/pre_user_nicename/ The filter is applied right after the nicename is sanitized, but we can still access the unsanitized data. This is from wp-includes/user.php
/*
* If a nicename is provided, remove unsafe user characters before using it.
* Otherwise build a nicename from the user_login.
*/
if ( ! empty( $userdata['user_nicename'] ) ) {
$user_nicename = sanitize_user( $userdata['user_nicename'], true );
if ( mb_strlen( $user_nicename ) > 50 ) {
return new WP_Error( 'user_nicename_too_long', __( 'Nicename may not be longer than 50 characters.' ) );
}
} else {
$user_nicename = mb_substr( $user_login, 0, 50 );
}
$user_nicename = sanitize_title( $user_nicename );
// Store values to save in user meta.
$meta = array();
/**
* Filters a user's nicename before the user is created or updated.
*
* #since 2.0.3
*
* #param string $user_nicename The user's nicename.
*/
$user_nicename = apply_filters( 'pre_user_nicename', $user_nicename );
$raw_user_url = empty( $userdata['user_url'] ) ? '' : $userdata['user_url'];
You can still access the unmodified nicename entered by the user with the $userdata['user_nicename'] variable. So an example filter would go like this:
add_filter( 'pre_user_nicename', 'my_nicename_modification');
function my_nicename_modification($userdata) {
/*do anything you want with $userdata['user_nicename'] here
or leave blank if you want it saved just as the user typed it in */
return $userdata['user_nicename'];
}
This will stop $user_nicename = sanitize_title( $user_nicename ); from running, on which you can read more on here https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/sanitize_title. That is that modifies the nicename as you explained in your question. Hope this helps