WP Snippet #006 Conditionally loading a custom template.

Originally posted on my website on February 19th 2020

How to conditionally load a different/custom template file.

Adding custom template files for specific pages can easily be done in WordPress by using special file headers. I wrote an article about this a while back. But this will make these templates selectable in the WordPress admin for each page or post. Now if you have a single purpose template like a contact page, or if you need the template to change because of some other condition your better of using the template_include filter like shown in this snippet.

	<?php
	/**
	* template_include_callback.
	*
	* Maybe redirect to a different template file
	*
	* @see https://since1979.dev/snippet-006-conditionally-loading-a-custom-template/
	*
	* @uses is_page https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/is_page/
	* @uses locate_template https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/locate_template/
	*
	* @param String $template The path of the template to include.
	* @return String
	*/
	function template_include_callback(String $template)
	{
	if (is_page(148))
	return locate_template('contact.php');
	return $template;
	}
	/**
	* Hook: template_include.
	*
	* @uses add_action() https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/functions/add_action/
	* @uses template_include https://developer.wordpress.org/reference/hooks/template_include/
	*/
	add_filter('template_include', 'template_include_callback', 100, 1);
	?>

view raw wp-template-redirect.php hosted with ❤ by GitHub

In the snippet above we add a filter to the template_include hook and register a callback function called template_include_callback.

Our new template_include_callback function receives a string containing the path to the currently selected template file and must return a path to a template file. In this example we determine if the current page is the contact page by checking the post id using the is_page function. If so we use the locate_template function to get a full path to the contact.php template file and return that path. if not we simply return the originaly selected template file.

Note: Checking for the post id is a bit crude but you can change this condition to whatever you need. You could check for tags, categories or maybe you have some Acf condition that needs a custom template.

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