Content Block element similar to an Essentials List

We are currently using version 12.3.1. We have been using hippo for 5+ years and use content blocks extensively on our pages.

We’re creating a new Content Block element similar to an Essentials List (we don’t use Essentials at all). For example, the author could specify that they want a list of the 4 upcoming event documents or the last 10 recent publication documents.

I have done this before, but I have hard coded a component onto a specific page type.

I don’t think it is possible, but can a bean query the data? Is there some kind of interface that I haven’t used before that would allow this?

I could add some standard queries (eg, result list of all events, publications, and news) into the content component that could then be parsed by the specific code in the jsp associated with the bean? This feels like a lot of overhead!

Is there another way to approach this that I haven’t thought of?

Thanks in advance for any help!
Lynn