implement separate templates for 1 post type

Question

• I have a custom post type 'courses', with a course description as post_content, and number of attachments

• I also have a custom post type 'course units', linked to the courses with a custom field 'course-id'

• I created a template file for the course dashboard, showing a list of the units, and a couple of links - to the course description, and to an archive of the attachments.

My (pretty generic) question:

• I'm stuck at how to create/implement the seperate 'pages' for the description, and the attachment archive - can't get my head around it.

Some additional info:

• I'm not using 'pretty permalinks' (because of some plugin conflicts), so the URL of the course dashboard is just http://www.example.com/?course=slug-of-the-course
• Ideally the description should be available on something like http://www.example.com/?course=slug-of-the-course&showdesc=1, and the attachments on http://www.example.com/?course=slug-of-the-course&showatt=1 - both URLs should forward to a specific template file in my theme folder.

Any ideas / suggestions?

Answer 1

You may use template redirect action to check if there is parameter set for description and based on that you can show desired template.

<?php 

add_action('template_redirect', 'course_template_redirect', 1);

function course_template_redirect()
{
    global $wp_query;
    if($wp_query->post_type=='courses' and $_REQUEST['showdesc']=='1')
    {
        //include your template from your theme folder. for e.g include('mytheme/coursetemplate.php');

    }
}

?>

Answer 2

If the description and attachments require separate URLs then I would create the 'attachments' as a separate post type to the 'courses' which contain the description.

Then from your main custom post type 'courses' I would create reciprocal relationships from each course to its units and attachments using the Posts 2 Posts plugin.