Retrieve each widget separately from a sidebar

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I would like to retrieve each widget existing in a sidebar in order e.g. to mix them with posts inside the main loop.

I know I can use different widget areas (sidebars) but this approach clutters the widget admin page with some tens of sidebars. To mitigate this, I thought to just add them to a single sidebar and retrieve them consecutively when needed.

But I’m stuck. I’ve no idea on how to retrieve a widget separately.

My tentative approach is to use wp_get_sidebars_widgets and the_widget but I’m not able to retrieve the widget class name.

Here is a simplified snippet of my code. In this case I’m trying to add a widget every three posts, but is an oversimplification of the logic (since I do not want just to add them regularly) in order to provide you the idea. I’d like to visualize every widget using the_widget or any other function. How can I accomplish this? Is it possible?

    <?php 
    $i = 1;
    $widgets = wp_get_sidebars_widgets(); // I KNOW THE USE OF THIS IS DISCOURAGED (PRIVATE) BUT CANNOT FIND ALTERNATIVES. 
    if ( have_posts() ) : ?>

        <?php while ( have_posts() ) : the_post(); ?>

            <?php
                if ($i%3 == 0){
                    echo "<h1>WIDGET #".($i/3)."</h1>";
                    the_widget($widgets['homepage-1'][$i/3]); // THIS DOES NOT WORKS SINCE I'M NOT GIVING THE CLASS NAME. HOW TO RETRIEVE IT?
                }
                get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() );
                $i++;
            ?>

        <?php endwhile; ?>

        <?php _s_paging_nav(); ?>

    <?php else : ?>

        <?php get_template_part( 'content', 'none' ); ?>

    <?php endif; ?>

2 s
2

I am taking the core of the question to be: “… I’m not able to retrieve the widget class name”

You will need to check the global variable $wp_registered_widgets to fill in the missing information. This proof-of-concept code should give you the idea. The code assumes a sidebar named sidebar-1. You will have to adjust that. 

global $wp_registered_widgets;
$widgets = wp_get_sidebars_widgets(); 
var_dump($widgets['sidebar-1']); // dump the data
foreach ($widgets['sidebar-1'] as $widget) {
  var_dump($wp_registered_widgets[$widget]); // dump the data
}

For more guidance, take a look at how dynamic_sidebar works, which is basically what I did to work out the above.

Untested, but this was interesting enough that I mocked up some more complete code:

global $wp_registered_widgets;
$i = 1;
$widgets = wp_get_sidebars_widgets(); 
$widgets = $widgets['homepage-1'];
if ( have_posts() ) { 
  while ( have_posts() ) { 
    the_post(); 
    if ($i%3 == 0){
      echo "<h1>WIDGET #".($i%3)."</h1>";
      $cn = $wp_registered_widgets[$widgets[$i%3]]['callback'][0];
      $cn = get_class($cn);
      the_widget($cn,$widgets[$i%3]);
    }
    get_template_part( 'content', get_post_format() );
    $i++;
  }
  _s_paging_nav(); 
} else {
  get_template_part( 'content', 'none' ); 
}

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