How do I pass data from page content to the underlying PHP template

Question

Pretty much all of the content on the site is going to be dynamically generated (php + db backend)

What is the preferred "wordpress way" of passing data to a php template (set up as a template in a wordpress theme)

So the template would be something like

<?php

generate_content_based_on_this_variable(page);

?>

and I'd need to be able to pass it page for each different page

---

Edit 1

So I have a page that, for simplicity, looks something like this

Hi everyone, this is page X The content here is generated from a db call:

SELECT * FROM db WHERE page=X

[Spit out db resultset here]

and the template would be something like

<?php

the_content()

$query='SELECT * FROM db WHERE page=X'
$result=$db->execute($query)
foreach($result as $row){
echo $row
}

?>

Answer 1

If you want to produce a page in WordPress whose structure and content are dynamically generated independent of the regular posts handling mechanism then:

1. Create a new page with title "My Custom Page". This generates the page slug 'my-custom-page' by default.

2. In the root of your active theme folder eg. \wp-content\themes\twentyeleven\ create a page template for this new page named page-my-custom-page.php.

3. Put your custom php code inside the page template.

4. Navigate to your-site.com/my-custom-page/ to see the results

Answer 2

You're asking a pretty vague question, but I think you should check out the WordPress Template Hierarchy, it might help you get a better understanding of how WordPress behaves.

You can use page-$slug.php or page-$id.php to automatically include a page-specific template.