Create Joomla User Programmatically

You can create a new Joomla user in your extension (module, plugin or component) easily. At minimum, you need an email to create new user.

Step 1: Check for existing User

First, you check if user already exists against the email.

public function check_user($email)
{
 $db = Factory::getDbo();
 $query = $db->getQuery(true);
 
 $query
 ->select('*')
 ->from($db->quoteName('#__users'))
 ->where($db->quoteName('email') . ' = ' . $db->quote($email))
 ->setLimit('1');
 
 $db->setQuery($query);
 
 $user = $db->loadObject();
 
 return $user;
}

The function will either return the user object or null value.

Step 2: Create New User

The variable $data is an array containing user details. To create a new user, you need email, username, name, password and user group id.

public function create_new_user($data)
{
 // Initialise the table with User
 $user = new User;
 
 $userdata = array();
 
 // Set username as email
 if (empty($data['username']))
 {
  $data['username'] = $data['email'];
 }
 
 // Set name
 if (empty($data['name']))
 {
  $data['name'] = ucfirst(strstr($data['email'], '@', true));
 }
 
 // Set password as six digit random number
 if (empty($data['password']))
 {
  $data['password'] = '';
  for ($i = 0; $i < 6; $i++)
  {
   $data['password'] .= mt_rand(1,9);
  }
  $userdata['requireReset'] = 1;
 }
 
 $userdata['password'] = $data['password'];
 $userdata['username'] = $data['username'];
 $userdata['name'] = $data['name'];
 $userdata['email'] = $data['email'];
 
 $userdata['block'] = 0;

 $userdata['groups'] = array();
 $userdata['groups'][] = $data['groups'];
 
 $user->bind($userdata);
 $user->save();
 
 return $user;
}

The function creates a new user and returns the user object.