If $IN->QSTR returns nothing, can I give it a value from the result of a query? Or am I not supposed to mess with those global variables? Sorry if this is a silly question but this is my first attempt at a plugin.

What I want to do is give it the value of the latest entry’s entry_id ONLY IF there is no entry id in the URL.

I want to use something like this with some existing gallery module code which uses the result of $IN->QSTR

if ($IN->QSTR == ‘’)
{
  $sql =“SELECT entry_id FROM exp_gallery_entries
WHERE gallery_id=’’ LIMIT 1”;

$IN = $DB->query($sql);
                      }

Still working on getting the gallery id in there so please ignore that. I want to know if this is basically sound before I go diving in there and possibly screw something up.

The downside is that EE tags use that variable (empty or not) to determine what entry, page, date, etc. to display on a page.  My manipulating that variable it is possible you might confuse those tags by having invalid values (entries that do not exist) or having it interpret it incorrectly (something looks like a date).

If you are careful though, it probably can work.

Thanks Paul, I’ll keep to my plan and post the results here.