Can you load a widget instance from a template?

Question

I'd like to create 'widgets' in certain areas on my site, that can have certain parameters configurable by a non-technical Magento store admin. Widgets, by all descriptions sound like a nice way of doing this. All the adminhtml elements are in place to allow them to fill in the parameters without too much hassle.

What I can't work out though, is how to load and render a specific widget instance at a particular point in a template (as created via CMS > Widget > Add New Widget Instance and stored in widget_instance). I used the layout update feature to insert it into a block, which works reasonably well, but it's not quite flexible enough for what I wish to achieve.

Is it possible in a template file to load and render a widget instance?

Answer 1

Yes, you can do something like this:

$widget = Mage::getModel('widget/widget_instance')->load($widgetId);
$widgetBlock = $this
                   ->getLayout()
                   ->createBlock($widget->getType(),
                                 $widget->getTitle(),
                                 $widget->getWidgetParameters());
echo $widgetBlock->toHtml();

Answer 2

If you don't know your widget ID, you can use this, and its not limited to templates.

$collection = Mage::getModel('widget/widget_instance')->getCollection();
        $collection->addStoreFilter(Mage::app()->getStore()->getId(), false)
            ->addFieldToFilter('title', $filter)->load();

        $widget = $collection->getFirstItem(); 

        if($widget && is_numeric($widget->getId())) {
            $widgetBlock = Mage::app()->getLayout()
                ->createBlock(
                    $widget->getType(),
                    $widget->getTitle(),
                    $widget->getWidgetParameters()
                );
            return $widgetBlock;
        }
        return false;