Jim Briggs

@threadi Thanks for the reply. It can definitely be done using the WP posts functionality, but is it worth the extra time it would take, given that the data refreshes so frequently? Each of the pages I want to make on the fly is a call for basically one row from a table (and one call to write the data for each page, when the data comes in from the external source). I would think going to a table for one row would be so much faster than doing the work of creating/calling a post object … or is it? I can see advantages to having a post, but my concern is that the extra processing of creating and reading them would negate any benefits.

Thanks for the explanation. Here’s some more specifics from my case.

My plugin has code like this

add_shortcode('MYPLUGIN','myplugin_main');

function myplugin_main($atts=[], $content = null)
{
// does stuff
}

When I go to edit a page that has the shortcode [MYPLUGIN], the function myplugin_main is fired. When I edit a page that does not have the shortcode, it is not fired. All of this makes a kind of sense, because it seems that WordPress can’t or doesn’t differentiate cases in which the shortcode exists as a shortcode and cases in which the shortcode is meant to function as a shortcode (that is, as a function call).

What I would like to do is to not have the myplugin_main function fire if the page is just being edited. Or, at least, have myplugin_main exit early if it’s not going to be needed, but I don’t know how to programmatically tell whether the shortcode is going to be interpreted or whether it’s going to be presented merely as the shortcode itself.

Thanks for the help.