Can't get the author's picture printed onto a node in Drupal 7

Question

After reading the documentation, it seems that the correct way of doing that is like this:

<?php print $user_picture; ?>

Wich won´t work (it doesn´t print anything at all).

After asking around, I get this answer, which sadly won't work either:

<?php global $user;
$image = theme('user_picture', $user);
print $image;?>

That code was suggested as a "last resource", but when I try to use it, I get this error message:

Fatal error: Cannot use object of type stdClass as array in /includes/theme.inc on line 1054

Looking for that particular line: if (isset($variables['#theme']) || isset($variables['#theme_wrappers'])) {, and in context:

  if (isset($variables['#theme']) || isset($variables['#theme_wrappers'])) {
    $element = $variables;
    $variables = array();
    if (isset($info['variables'])) {
      foreach (array_keys($info['variables']) as $name) {
        if (isset($element["#$name"])) {
          $variables[$name] = $element["#$name"];
        }
      }
    }

It's pretty clear that it should work, but it doesn't.

Using contemplate module, I get this output as an alternative:

<?php print $node->picture ?>

Which won't work either.

I've tried then with Devel module (using the /devel tab of the node):

I get this:

picture (String, 4 characters ) 2876
$...->picture

Which won't work, because the output is just "2876", but is the only "picture" there.

So what can I do? How can I trace this problem?

Answer 1

note that

theme('user_picture', $vars);

is a tpl.php file. you can dpm($vars) of a preprocess function for this theme function and see what you can use.