Register fetched data (not in database) in Timber PostQuery - wordpress

Question

I am currently developing for a site that uses Timber in Wordpress. I am using an API of a different site to fetch posts from a different site, so they are up to date with the current state on that site. The problem is that I’m using the post title field to fetch the correct ID from the API. This means that no title or content data is stored in the database.
Is there a way I can register this data so that Timber PostQuery objects will also fetch these pages properly? I am unable to access or alter the result of $result = new Timber\PostQuery() afterwards, since these fields are protected and private.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

#Stan this is definitely an edge edge edge case. If you can get what you need down to WordPress IDs, these can be sent straight to PostQuery()...
$result = new Timber\PostQuery(array(2342, 2661, 2344, 6345,));
You could try extending the PostQuery class yourself to see if this is custom functionality you could wrap inside of it so the API you end up working with at the top-level is clean and simple

Answer 2

Timber is designed to be extended and customised to your use case.
You can create a custom class that extends Timber\Post and write your own methods for fetching the data from the API as necessary.
<?php
class CustomPost extends \Timber\Post {
/* not necessary, this just caches it */
private $myCustomContent;
/* override Timber\Post::content */
public function content(){
/* if we've fetched it from the API this request, return the result */
if ( $this->myCustomContent ) return $myCustomContent;
/* otherwise fetch it, then return the result */
return $this->fetchCustomContent();
}
/* function to fetch from external API */
private function fetchCustomContent(){
/* whatever the API call is here.. */
$result = wp_remote_post....
/* maybe some error handling or defaults */
/* cache it on the object's property we setup earlier */
$this->myCustomContent = $result->content;
return $this->myCustomContent;
}
}
Now to use our custom class we have two choices. We can manually decide when to use it by specifying it as the 2nd argument in our PostQuery()
<?php
/* Note: Passing in 'null' as the first argument timber uses the global / main WP_Query */
$items = new PostQuery( null, CustomPost::class );
/* This examples is a custom query (not the global / main query ) */
$args = [
'post-type' => 'my-custom-post-type',
// etc etc
];
$items = new PostQuery( $args, CustomPost::class );
/* Each Post in $items will be the class CustomPost instead of Timber\Post */
If your custom post classes correspond with a particular post type, you can use the Timber Class Map to always get back the corresponding Custom Post Class..
<?php
/* functions.php or similar */
add_filter( 'Timber\PostClassMap', 'my_func_modify_class_map' );
function( $classMap ){
$classMap['my-custom-post-type'] = CustomPost::class;
return $classMap;
}
/* index.php or xxx.php template file... */
$args = [
'post-type' => 'my-custom-post-type',
// etc etc
];
/* No second argument needed */
$items = new PostQuery( $args );
/* Each Post in $items will be the class CustomPost instead of Timber\Post */
Hope this helps!