Accessing the current node information and the current user information in Drupal

Submitted by johnvsc on January 4, 2009 - 1:27pm
in
This is a very common question in the Drupal forums, one that I have often had to look up when I am working on a project: "How do I access the current node information from the within the node that I am on?". Like wise, a similar question is " How do I access the current user information so that I can say something like: 'Welcome, *username*! Thanks for visiting our site!' ?" 
<?php
global $user;
 
drupal_set_message("
". var_export($user, TRUE) ."
");

if ( arg(0) == 'node' && is_numeric(arg(1)) && ! arg(2) ) {
  $node = node_load(arg(1));
drupal_set_message("
".var_export($node , TRUE)."
");
}
?>