As designed Custom user field deletion does not delete entry data

[rugk]

When you delete a custom user field the data set by users for this field is not deleted from the database and can still be used by add-ons e.g.
I doubt this is intended.

 

[Chris D]

There's code to remove the values via the _postDelete method of the DataWriter:

$this->_db->delete('xf_user_field_value', 'field_id = ' . $this->_db->quote($fieldId));
// note the user caches aren't rebuilt here; this shouldn't be an issue as we don't enumerate them

Unless you're talking about the cache of the field values in the xf_user_profile template, in which case this is expected (as suggested by the comment above).

 

[rugk]

In my test it is just did not got deleted. I don't know whether this is caused by a cache.
But after the user changes one of the other user fields after the deletion of the one field, the previously deleted field is also (correctly) deleted from $user['customFields'].

 

[Mike]

This is expected an mentioned in the comment Chris quoted. You can rebuild user info if you really want to get rid of it, but there isn't an expectation that a field would be accessed that doesn't exist (and we never loop through the custom field cache for display).

 

[rugk]

Okay, but if I have an add-on which uses this field, how can I check whether the field exists?
array_key_exist does not really help, because it only checks the cache in this case.

Feel free to move this post into the Dev-Support/Help section if you want to.

 

[rugk]

Okay I "moved" it by myself: https://xenforo.com/community/threads/check-whether-custom-user-field-really-exists-no-cache.113622/