Title: Displaying Eternal Data – Not Posts
Last modified: August 22, 2016

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# Displaying Eternal Data – Not Posts

 *  [bradgb](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bradgb/)
 * (@bradgb)
 * [11 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/displaying-eternal-data-not-posts/)
 * I am creating a plugin that needs to display eternal data, not wordpress posts.
 * What I have done: registered rewrites so wp recognizes my archive/single URLs,
   hooked into template_include to direct it to use my template if the requested
   URL was one of mine, and then in the template I call a function to load the external
   data and display it in post/archive format.
 * This works fine as long as I dont switch templates. Unfotunately, there is a 
   variation in twentyfourteen and twentyfifteen template structure, in which #content
   and #main are inverted.
 * TwentyFifteen: body > #page > #content > #primary > #main
    TwentyFourteen: body
   > #page > #main > #primary > #content
 * This means that whatever one I code my plugin template for, it is broken in the
   other.
 * twentyfifteen/single.php:
 *     ```
       get_header(); ?>
   
       	<div id="primary" class="content-area">
       		<main id="main" class="site-main" role="main">
   
       		<?php
       		// Start the loop.
       		while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
       ```
   
 * twentyfourteen/single.php
 *     ```
       get_header(); ?>
   
       	<div id="primary" class="content-area">
       		<div id="content" class="site-content" role="main">
       			<?php
       				// Start the Loop.
       				while ( have_posts() ) : the_post();
       ```
   
 * So my question(s) are:
    - Am I going about this the right way? Do you know of a better way to inject
      external data?
    - Why are twentyfifteen tags inverted? Is this not a bug? Because I checked 
      going back to twentlyeleven, and they are all in the order …#main > #primary
      > #content.
    - Is there a way to do this, without requiring including a template, so that
      it works on more sites? The templates are going to be problematic on each 
      site the plugin is used on, for just such reasons. I would prefer to forgo
      including a template, and somehow hook into archive.php and single.php to 
      display my content, given the URL matches one of my requests.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

 *  Moderator [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * (@bcworkz)
 * [11 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/displaying-eternal-data-not-posts/#post-5811031)
 * How you inject data depends on the nature of the data and where and how it should
   appear. There’s a number of techniques, none are any more right or wrong than
   another, it just depends.
 * What you should not do is make any assumptions about how themes contain or style
   their pages. There’s over 3K themes in the WP repository, many times that out
   in “the wild”. Only a relative few have the exact same container structure. There’s
   a reasonable chance there’s a header and footer that will be loaded by respective
   function calls, but it’s not an absolute given. The chances of there being a 
   sidebar is even smaller. AFAIK calling `get_sidebar()`, `get_footer()`, and `
   get_header()` will do no harm even though it may not result in anything being
   displayed.
 * Assuming there will be #content, #main, etc. classes or ID at all is a stretch.
   Assuming they occur in a particular order is foolish IMO. Templates were not 
   really intended to be supplied by plugins at all, at least not the kind you select
   when making a new page. Of course there are all manner of plugins that use templates.
   They have their place, but you have to let the theme do what it does with no 
   assumptions on your part.
 * Another way to inject content is with shortcodes. A page could be automatically
   created with the shortcode as content when your plugin is activated. The main
   advantage here is your content will be fully wrapped in containers intended by
   the theme to be applied to normal page content. When you use your own template,
   you essentially discard such containers and create your own, with unpredictable
   results.
 * You could also inject content by using some hook. This is better for supplementary
   content that needs to appear at a particular spot amongst normal site content.
   You could also use javascript/jQuery to inject content. The problem here is you
   cannot know the container structure used by the theme, so about the only reliable
   option is to work with the inner HTML of the `<body>` element, the only container
   you can be sure will exist.

Viewing 1 replies (of 1 total)

The topic ‘Displaying Eternal Data – Not Posts’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [eternal](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/eternal/)
 * [Remote](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/remote/)

 * In: [Hacks](https://wordpress.org/support/forum/plugins-and-hacks/hacks/)
 * 1 reply
 * 2 participants
 * Last reply from: [bcworkz](https://wordpress.org/support/users/bcworkz/)
 * Last activity: [11 years, 2 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/displaying-eternal-data-not-posts/#post-5811031)
 * Status: not resolved

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