How do I find the user whose field is equal to the email address?

Question

I am trying to fetch a Username where a field equals the value of another field.

On my content type, I have an Entity Reference fields that creates a select list of email addresses.

In Rules, reacting on Creating/Updating nodes in this content type, I am trying to Fetch a User Entity where the value the select list field equals the user's email.

How can I do that?

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What I have tried:

I first chose to "Fetch Entity by Property".

The Value is "User", the Property was set to "Name", and the Value was set to the title of the Entity Reference field in the first screenshot (The title of each node in the select list is an email address)

The Fetched Entities are called "fetched_user".

When trying to Add a Variable, it shows multiple values, so I assume I would need to make a loop first.

So I created a loop:

I am very lost on what to do next. Can anyone help me?

Thank you.

Answer 1

Your first mistake is in your fetch by property action. The property must be set to email for the users to be found.

After that, the fetch by property action will always return a list even if it's only one result. So you just need fetched-user:0:name. No loop required.

In php, 0 is the first item in a list.

Answer 2

Below is an answer to this part of your question:

on what to do next

It seems that for the list_item being processed, you want to add some extra "test" (similar to a Rules Condition), to verify if the user being processed is the one with the eMail Id you're looking for.

But you're within a Rules Action already, where you cannot add such "test" anymore. Except if you use the Conditional Rules module, which allows you to add such tests within a Rules Action. For some examples of a rule that uses this module, refer to my answer to either of these questions (which include a rule in Rules export format):

• How to create rule to change user role based on points (using User Points module)?
• How to include only an updated custom field in an email created using Rules?

Another solution which does not require that extra module, is to add a Rules Component at that very same spot, in which you can add a Rules Condition again, and where you then also add the rest of the required Rules Action(s) to complete the rest of your Rules logic (if that remaining Rules logic can indeed be implemented like so). For more details on that, refer to the answer to "What's the alternative to using the Conditional Rules module?".

Note: I also agree with Niall's additional "recommendations".