How to fix pagination for this query [closed]

Question

I would like to paginate this query but I get no links for pagination at the end of the list of posts fetched. How can I fix it?

For further information, this query is run via a shortcode, so it might be placed on another page or post. So it might be the case that the post is already paginated, but within that post we then find this code that is getting some posts from the custom post type, and they need to be paginated as well.

    $paged = get_query_var('paged') ? get_query_var('paged') : 1;
    // Query to get all test items for display
    $test_items = new WP_Query( array(
        'post_type' => 'myplugin_test_item',
        'posts_per_page' => $settings['test_limit'], 
        'orderby'  => 'meta_value', 
        'meta_key' => 'myplugin_item_date', 
        'order' => 'DESC',
        'paged' => $paged,

    ) );

    // Globalize $wp_query
    global $wp_query;
    // Swap-hack
    $temp = $wp_query;
    $wp_query = null;
    $wp_query = $test_items;        

    if( $test_items->have_posts() ) {
        while ( $test_items->have_posts() ) {                
            $test_items->the_post();
            $permalink = get_post_meta( get_the_ID(), 'myplugin_item_permalink', true );                
        }
        echo paginate_links();

        wp_reset_postdata();

    } else {
        echo 'No test items found';
    }

    $wp_query = null; 
    $wp_query = $temp;  // Reset
}

Answer 1

Have you tried changing the get_query_var('page') with get_query_var('paged') ? This may change depending which file you are working on.

Answer 2

You could try adding the current & total pages as $args to the paginate_links function:

echo paginate_links( array(
    'current' => get_query_var('page') ? get_query_var('page') : 1,
    'total' => $test_items->max_num_pages
) );

Found here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/paginate_links#Examples