[wp-hackers] repeating fields in usermeta?

[Casey Bisson]

Storing email addresses in a serialized array would make searching for  
a user by email address difficult.

My choices so far appear to be:

Create a separate table for email addys.
Create my own functions to enter and read email addys in usermeta.
Patch the existing functions to support this use case while  
maintaining backwards compatibility.




On Apr 16, 2009, at 8:56 AM, SoJ Web wrote:

> Would it not be possible to store the e-mail addresses and phone  
> numbers as serialized arrays under one meta key?
>
>
>> An application I'm working on needs to store an arbitrary number of  
>> email addresses and phone numbers per user. The wp_users table  
>> obviously isn't the place, but the wp_usermeta table might not be  
>> either. The get_ and update_usermeta functions aren't built for it,  
>> anyway.
>>
>> The various postmeta functions are very smart about handling  
>> multiple entries of the same meta_key per post, but not the  
>> usermeta functions. Is that by design?
>>
>> --Casey