oh, one more thing I found is this bugreport, or ticket:

http://trac.elgg.org/ticket/721

the last change: (so it's not closed? still a bug, or what?)

Changed 12 months ago by cash

• priority changed from high to normal
• severity changed from major to minor
• milestone changed from Elgg 1.8 to Elgg 1.8.1

Wrap your code where you try to save an object in another user's name into

$ignore = elgg_set_ignore_access(true);

(your code comes here)

elgg_set_ignore_access($ignore);

This will override the default protection that would not let you edit objects owned by other users.

Andras has the right idea. You MUST make sure you bring the elgg_set_ignore_access back to false afterwards otherwise your site becomes somewhat "unprotected".

oh, sorry, I forgot, it's under elgg 1.7.*

The metadata is loaded on demand. Grab an element of the array and see:

echo $my_obj[0]->my_obj_type;

I understand now, yeah it really works, thanks Cash! :)