Accessing content before it is templated

Can I access the content added in Perch before it is templated?

You want to get data entered into Perch as an array so that you can use it in your own PHP script.

The perch_content_custom function (and the _custom function in our first party apps) can be passed an option of skip-template set to true. This will then return that data as an associative array and you can use it in any way you want. It’s a handy way to let Perch do most of the legwork, giving you the final data to play with.

    <?php
      $content = perch_content_custom('Writing', array(
            'count'=>5,
            'skip-template'=>'true',
            'page'=>'/writing/index.php',
            'sort'=>'date',
        'sort-order'=>'DESC'
    )); ?>