A Super Elegant Method to Check if a Joomla User is a Super User

A few weeks ago, we wrote a post in which we admitted that we haven’t discovered fire. This morning, however, we had a new discovery akin to discovering fire, and it was a very clean, very elegant, very lovely method to check if a user is a super user. It all happened by coincidence when were checking the contents of the UserHelper.php file which is located under the libraries/src/User folder. We believe that our discovery is a defining moment in the history of mankind!

We know you’re anxious to know what the method is, so, here’s the code:

JUserHelper::checkSuperUserInUsers(array('5'));

The above checks if 5 is the ID of a super user. If it is, then the function will return true, if not, then it will return false.

What happens if you supply an array of users to the function?

As you can see from the above code, the checkSuperUserInUsers static method accepts an array of users (not just one user), so what happens if you pass an array of users to the function? Well, the function will return true as soon as it detects a user in the array that is a super user. If there are no super users in the array, then the function will return false.

Why does this method exist?

The checkSuperUserInUsers is mainly used to block batch actions on super users when the user performing the action is not a super user. For example, if a “non super user” selects a group of users in the Joomla backend, and clicks on the Delete button on the top, then Joomla will not allow the deletion when one or more selected users are super users. The function checkSuperUserInUsers is used to do the checking.

We hope that you enjoyed our little post this Saturday morning. If, by any chance, you have a Joomla development project, and you need help with it, then please contact us. Our prices are right, our code is clean, and we have over a decade of Joomla experience.

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