How to render content plugin into a module

Question

I'm porting a code from a template override of com_content category blog_item into a module.
Everything is all right done, except for one thing I'm struggling with.

I have this code from com_content tmpl:

<?php echo $this->item->event->beforeDisplayContent; ?>

In the module I tried:

<?php echo $item->event->beforeDisplayContent; ?>

But it is not working and it fires a notice ("Notice: Trying to get property of non-object...")

Any suggestion to have it working into a module?

Answer 1

I have no idea about how you build your module and what the $item stands for there.

Assuming you are loading the articles using the com_content's model and you have an array of $items with each $item being an Article Object, returned by the ContentModel, then you can do at the top of your module's template:

$dispatcher = JEventDispatcher::getInstance();
JPluginHelper::importPlugin('content');

Then in your loop of the $items (since you said you are porting over a category blog, I guess you will have a list of articles).

foreach ($items as $item) {

    // Get everything from the enabled OnContentBefore plugins in an array
    // passing the $item and $params as reference
    $results = $dispatcher->trigger('onContentBeforeDisplay', array('com_content.article', &$item, &$item->params, 0)); 

    $beforeDisplayContent = trim(implode("\n", $results));

    echo $beforeDisplayContent . ' - ' . $item->title;

}

More reading: JPlugin Documentation:

• Triggering content plugins in extensions
• Content Plugin Events