Add a Template to a custom post type

Question

I'm recoding my website with custom post types to be better organized, have a better search experience and being able to hide some pages from other contributors, but I have a little problem.

I've set up a post type named Files which contains some files that my contributors should not see. Basically the legal pages, the contact page and so on.

As I had all the pages in the default Pages post type I was able to select a template for each page in the page attributes. Now in my new custom page type, I can only select the order of the page and nothing else. So I have a template for the legal pages and another one for the contact page, which includes all the PHP code. How can I select these templates in my new custom post type?

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EDIT

Okay, I've understood, that it's only possible to set a template by setting up a PHP file named single-*(post_type_name)*. But as I said, I've two different templates, and more will come very soon, so how can I set these to one or maybe two posts inside that post_type. There must be a possibility, isn't it? The makers of WordPress will unlikely have us create a new post_type for a single file...

Answer 1

From what I understand, you've got THREE options (updated).

Option 1: Dynamic Solution Create categories for your custom post type - each category is going to have its own template.

You then create a single template that splits off based on category. Meaning you use the general header and footer in your single-postypename.php and anything else that you want to apply to both templates, but in the meat of it, you then create some php logic for "if category x, use content y template (or partial, I like partials)" and "if category z, use content z template (or partial)". I assume that if you're working in templates you're okay with the code for that, but if not just comment and I can put together an example.

Option 2: Static Solution Each post inside your custom post type gets its own template.

You need the single-posttypename.php as your default, but then you can create single-postypename-postslug.php and presto, you have a custom template for that specific post that you can mess around in. As long as your slugs match, it'll just know what to do.

Example:

single-file.php (as your default template)

single-file-legaldocument2.php (as a custom template for yourdomain.ca/file/legaldocument2 )

Option 3: Identify a template

WordPress now offers the ability to assign a template based on post type. I don't think this can get as granular for categories of a post type or a specific post, for that you would still need solution #2.

Example:

<?php
/*
Template Name: Full-width layout
Template Post Type: post, page, product
*/
 

Answer 2

Create a template file like this in your child theme.

<?php

// Template Name: CPT Template
// Template Post Type: files

Assumes files is the name of your custom post type.

WordPress now supports this functionality

Answer 3

From WordPress version 4.7 you can now assign custom page templates to other post types along with page. Please see the answer posted in this topic https://wordpress.stackexchange.com/a/264573/14347

Answer 4

The single_template filter will let you use whatever template file you want for your CPT, but it's up to you to provide some means of selection and storage of a template name or some other reference to make it a dynamic solution.

The built-in page post type does this by reading all of the valid template files in your theme, and adding that list to a meta box, which stores the selected filename in post meta.

You can quickly duplicate this behavior by saving a filename manually in a Custom Field (post meta), then adding a filter to check for that meta key with the current post. Here's a quick untested example from my other answer linked in a comment above-

function wpa_single_cpt_template( $templates = '' ){
    $single = get_queried_object();

    if( 'files' == $single->post_type ){
        $template_name = get_post_meta( $single->ID, 'my_template_file', 'true' );
        if( !empty( $template_name ) ){
            $templates = locate_template( $template_name, false );
        }
    }
    return $templates;
}
add_filter( 'single_template', 'wpa_single_cpt_template' );