wppaste
WordPress

wp_create_user( string $username, string $password, string $email = '' ): int|WP_Error

Since
2.0.0
Source
wp-includes/user.php:2979
Provides a simpler way of inserting a user into the database.

Description

Creates a new user with just the username, password, and email. For more complex user creation use wp_insert_user() to specify more information.

Compatibility

WordPress
since 2.0.0
PHP
7.4–8.6-dev
  • 6.7.7
  • 6.8.8
  • 6.9.7
  • 7.0.4
  • 7.1.0

Present in every tracked release (6.7.7 to 7.1.0), and compiles on PHP 7.4 through 8.6-dev.

Parameters

$usernamestring
The user's username.
$passwordstring
The user's password.
$emailstringoptional
The user's email. Default empty.Default: ''

Return value

int|WP_Error
The newly created user's ID or a WP_Error object if the user could not be created.

Performance profile

How much work a call to wp_create_user() does, and what it touches: the algorithmic scaling, the Zend instruction count per call across PHP versions, the hooks it hands control to, and the core code that calls it. Measured from the compiled opcodes, not a stopwatch, so every number is identical on any machine running the same PHP version, and every function in core is ranked by cost.

Cost class
Moderate

Reads stored settings via get_option(), cached per request but not free on a cold cache.

Scaling
Constant

No loop in the body: the same number of instructions runs whatever you pass in.

Instructions
22

Executed per call on PHP 8.5. The body compiles to 22.

Plugin surface
None

Nothing here hands control to plugin code.

Called by
4

4 places in core call this, so the cost is paid more often than your own code shows.

What it touches

  • hookthird-party callbacksapply_filters()one call below wp_create_user()
  • optionoption read or writeget_option()one call below wp_create_user()

Further down the call graph this can also reach query, cache, serialize and transient. Those are the worst case, several calls deep and usually down an error path, not what a normal call pays.

What one call costs · 1 distinct outcome

One number would be a lie: the work depends on which branch runs. These are every distinct cost wp_create_user() can have, taken from its control-flow graph on PHP 8.5.

WhenInstructionsCalls it makes
always22wp_slash(), wp_slash(), compact(), wp_insert_user()

Across PHP versions

Compiles the same on PHP 7.4, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, 8.5 and 8.6-dev: 22 instructions, 22 executed per call, 0 branches. The work does not change between versions.

An instruction is not a fixed amount of time, so a matching count is not necessarily the same speed; what it rules out is a difference in the work itself.

Uses · 2

  • wp_slash()Adds slashes to a string or recursively adds slashes to strings within an array.
  • wp_insert_user()Inserts a user into the database.

Used by · 4

Source code

View on Trac View on GitHub 

function wp_create_user(	$username,	#[\SensitiveParameter]	$password,	$email = '') {	$user_login = wp_slash( $username );	$user_email = wp_slash( $email );	$user_pass  = $password; 	$userdata = compact( 'user_login', 'user_email', 'user_pass' );	return wp_insert_user( $userdata );}

Changelog

Introduced in 2.0.0. Unchanged from 6.7.7 through 7.1.0.

  1. 6.7.7
  2. 6.8.8
  3. 6.9.7
  4. 7.0.4
  5. 7.1.0

Signature, return type and hooks compared across 5 parsed releases.

About this page

Parsed data
Generated from the wordpress-develop 7.0.4 tag, from src/wp-includes/user.php, and regenerated for each WordPress release so it tracks the code rather than a snapshot of it.
Corrections
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