Add new user and add meta at once

Question

I am working on a custom sign up proces where a user first fills in his name and email, then receives an activation e-mail and then the sign up proces continues.

The e-mail contains an activation link with a reference. I need to save this reference in my new user so if the user clicks on the link I can retrieve back the user data.

But for some reason I cannot add my user meta data by inserting the new user.

So first I have my form handling where I get the POST values. And If they are true I start this code:

$ref = md5( get_bloginfo( 'name' ) . $reg_email );
$activation_url = get_bloginfo( 'wpurl' ) . '/search-company?ref=' . $ref;

// Create user
$random_password = wp_generate_password( 12, true, false );
$user_id = username_exists( $email );
$userdata = array(
  'user_login'  => $email,
  'user_pass'   => $random_password,
  'user_email'  => $email,
  'first_name'  => $first_name,
  'last_name'   => $surname,
  'role'            => 'author',
);
wp_insert_user( $userdata );
add_user_meta( $userdata, 'verification_ref', $ref );

And then I send my e-mail by wp_mail() with the activation link, this works fine, but I only need to save the verification reference in the user meta of the user.

Answer 1

wp_insert_user returns your new user's ID, if created successful. You can add the user_meta to this ID:

$userid = wp_insert_user( $userdata );
if ( !is_wp_error( $userid ) ) { // check if insert was successful
    add_user_meta( $userid, 'verification_ref', $ref ); // add the meta
} else {
    /* Error Handling */
}