Parse template tags outside of Expression Engine Template

Question

I'm running Expression Engine 2.3.0 and using the Channel Images add on.

Part of the site is complex enough that I'm doing it via a plugin rather than using EE's template logic. What I've essentially got is a CodeIgniter controller and views that's called on the site using an EE template tag that I specify.

I'd like to use channel images to make the channel data I'm displaying in my views look a little nicer. Problem is... the Channel Images function doesn't seem to allow me to call it as PHP. Because of the EE template parameters.

So, I decided I'd try to run a template block through the parser. But I'm not getting a result. Any ideas? Or maybe a workaround to call the function directly?

<?php $this->EE =& get_instance();

$img_tpl = '{exp:channel_images:images entry_id="'. $item['id'] .'" cover_only="yes"}
            <div style="float:left; display:inline; width:125px;">
                    <a href="{image:url:large}" title="{image:title}"><img src="{image:url:small}" alt="{image:title}" /></a>
                    <p>{image:description}</p>
            </div>
            {/exp:channel_images:images}';

$opts = array('');
$img = $this->EE->output->set_output($this->EE->TMPL->parse_variables($this->EE->TMPL->parse_globals($img_tpl), array($opts)));

?>

Answer 1

You're going to have a hell of a time here. No part of EE's front-end parsing is written thinking that it will be called from outside of EE.

parse_variables() and parse_globals() don't parse full EE tag pairs (only individual variables), which is why you're getting no results.

I'd really recommend making this work with EE templates.