Question

I have created a template file for a custom page inside wordpress plugin directory but I can’t find the right path to it. This piece of code doesn’t work:

update_post_meta( $pas_tasks_page_id, '_wp_page_template', dirname( __FILE__ ) . '/task-list-template.php' );

It works only when I put manually the template file into wordpress theme and changing code to:

update_post_meta( $pas_tasks_page_id, '_wp_page_template', '/task-list-template.php' );

But as a plugin developer I would like to create new template inside my plugin directory not manually. How should I do that?

Answer 1

I recently did something just like this using the “template_include” filter. I did it like this:

function include_template_files() {
    $plugindir = dirname( __FILE__ );

    if (is_post_type_archive( 'post-type-name' )) {
        $templatefilename = 'archive-post_type_name.php';
        $template = $plugindir . '/theme_files/' . $templatefilename;
        return $template;
    }

    if ('post-type-name' == get_post_type() ){
        $templatefilename = 'single-post-type-name.php';
        $template = $plugindir . '/theme_files/' . $templatefilename;
        return $template;
    }
}
add_filter( 'template_include', 'include_template_files' );

I just used wordpress conditionals to check what what template was being requested and then created a “theme_files” folder in my plugin directory and placed the appropriately named wordpress template files in there. This was to create a single and archive template for a custom post type.