wordpress - how to get php variable in page from sidebar

Question

I wrote my own custom page template for my Wordpress page, now I want to change sidebar.php to insert a small menu whenever that page template is loaded.

// sidebar.php
if ( isset($event_name) ) {
  // do something
}

But apparently sidebar.php doesn't recognize variable $event_name.

How do I come about solving this?

Answer 1

While I'm not familiar with the way WordPress implements templates, have you tried declaring the variable global in the sidebar page?

Answer 2

See: Function Reference/is page template « WordPress Codex to be able to detect page template in use.