Site icon Hip-Hop Website Design and Development

Adding additional data to WP_Post object

I want to add additional items to the data returned as WP_Post. So for every function/query that returns a WP_Post object I want my additional data added.

Example of returned result:

WP_Post (object) => [
    // Default data returned by WP_Post
    ID                  => int,
    post_author         => string,
    post_name           => string,
    post_type           => string,
    post_title          => string,
    post_date           => string,
    post_date_gmt       => string,
    post_content        => string,
    post_excerpt        => string,
    post_status         => string,
    comment_status      => string,
    ping_status         => string,
    post_password       => string,
    post_parent         => int,
    post_modified       => string,
    post_modified_gmt   => string,
    comment_count       => string,
    menu_order          => string,

    // Additional data I want to add
    extra_data_1        => array,
    more_data_key       => string,
    another_added       => string
]

For example when the functions get_post() or get_page_by_path() are run they will return the WP_Post object along with my additional data.

I’ve tried finding the appropriate hook/filter but this has been unsuccessful.

I am hoping I can do something like:

// This is concept code
add_action('pre_wp_post_return', function($data) {
    $data->extra_data_1     = get_post_meta($data->ID, 'extra_data');
    $data->more_data_key    = get_post_meta($data->ID, 'more_data', true);
    $data->another_added    = get_post_meta($data->ID, 'another_data', true);

    return $data;
});

My reasoning is I am having to build a custom API for WP that uses a range of different core functions which return WP_Post objects. Being able to add my additional data in one place would prevent me from duplicating code.

I hope this is clear enough. Any help would be great!