WP-Mix

Here is a plug-n-play function to check user roles, based on an array of input values.

To check whether or not the current user has any of the specified roles, include this function in your plugin or theme’s functions.php file:

function check_user_role($roles, $user_id = null) {
	if ($user_id) $user = get_userdata($user_id);
	else $user = wp_get_current_user();
	if (empty($user)) return false;
	foreach ($user->roles as $role) {
		if (in_array($role, $roles)) {
			return true;
		}
	}
	return false;
}

Once this function is included, you can call it like so:

if (check_user_role(array('author','editor','custom_role'))) {
	// do stuff for user
}

Also, if you want to check a specific user ID, you can use the second parameter:

if (check_user_role(array('author','editor','custom_role'), 177)) {
	// do stuff for user ID 177
}

This will check whether or not user with ID 177 has any of the roles, “author”, “editor”, or “custom_role”.