Dynamically Generating Content Without Using Publish Features

I’ve encountered this problem before while trying to get AJAX data out of WordPress and developed two ways of handling this. The key is to call your WordPress site in a valid way. There are two ways to do it and both require some knowledge of PHP. The first is to make a special “AJAX” template using a child theme and a special template.php file that does not provide the header and footer of your site. This way, the bare article from your DB is served up. It isn’t very dynamic, but it will get the job done in a pinch.

The other way is to use a plugin to “override” WP’s delivery of content while allowing things like DB access to remain. You serve your own content in a special way using a plugin. (Sounds like what you’re trying to do.) There’s a basic plugin that does this. It’s not a plugin in the truest form of the word — you have to edit the PHP files to get the content you want. It does allow you to override WP and deliver customized content without a header and footer. The method it uses to do this is what you’re interested in because it overrides WP’s default content engine and outputs its own stuff. You can read about it here and download an archive here.

The key part I think you’re interested in, however, is this:

$uri = null; $qry = array();
if( strpos( $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'], '?' ) !== false ) {
	list($uri, $qry) = explode( '?', $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] );
	$qry = $_GET;
} else {
	$uri = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
}

$uri = rtrim( $uri, '/' );
$uri = ltrim( $uri, '/' );
$tokens = explode( '/', $uri );
if( array_shift( $tokens ) == $this->sniff ) {
	$this->controller = ucwords( strtolower( array_shift( $tokens ) ) );
	$this->action = ucwords( strtolower( array_shift( $tokens ) ) );
	foreach( $tokens as $token ) {
		$this->tokens[] = $token;
	}
	if( is_array( $qry ) ) {
		foreach( $qry as $key => $val ) {
			$this->tokens[$key] = $val;
		}
	}
	if( $this->controller == '' ) {
		$this->controller = $this->default_controller;
	}
	$this->template = DWP_PLUGIN_DIR . '/template.php';
}
add_action( 'ajaxifier_do_framework', array( &$this, 'get_view' ) );
add_filter( 'template_include', array( &$this, 'get_template' ) );

This is the __construct() method of a larger object. But what’s happening here is $this->sniff = ‘ajax’ for instance. Then when a user visits https://yoursite.com/ajax/index/view this code will call another abstract object View::IndexView() and pass any arguments along to it.

It uses a custom method to query the database and deliver the content, when called, or allows WordPress to continue unabated if not. The “template_include” hook allows us to use a custom template to deliver the content without a header and footer.

I think the concept of what you are trying to do is in this. You can serve content that you create yourself, from a different database or by any method you choose this way while still allowing WordPress to handle user authentication and database access. You could download the whole package and have a look at it. It may help you in your plugin development.

I figured it out.

require_once('../../../wp-load.php');
get_header();

//output your content here

get_footer();