Display custom post type archive on page.php template

Question

I want to display the custom post type archive of my plugin inside a normal page template. My approach was:

function my_include_template($template) {
    global $post;

    if ( is_post_type_archive('my_custom_post') ) {

        $new_template = locate_template( array( 'page.php' ) );

        if ( '' != $new_template ) {
            return $new_template ;
        }
    }

    return $template;
}

add_filter('template_include', 'my_include_template', 99);

This way the page.php template will be taken but the get_template_part() function of the template itself will be called for every post within the archive.

But in fact I don't want to do this, I simply want to output a list of all posts inside this archive by using the normal page template: e.g.

• post title 1
• post title 2
• post title 3...

Note: I don't want to create a custom template within my plugin due to the fact that In my opinion I cannnot rely on all the theme authors:

<?php get_header(); ?>
    <div class="my-content">
        ...
    </div>  
<?php get_footer(); ?>

Because a custom template file like above, could break the layout if the theme has a non standard structure.

So this is the reason why it would be best to output my archive inside a normal page template of the theme itself.

Any suggestion how to handle this?

---

Update 1

I have to specify: Of course I can replace the content of a user selected "my-archive" page. This will work for the normal custom post archive so far.

My problem is that I additionally have a taxonomy as category for the posts. So my basic slugs look like:

• Single post: /article/postname/
• CPT archive: /articles/
• Category Taxonomy: /articles/category1/

Would be okay to use the same page for both archives, but of course when visiting /articles/category1/ only the posts of this category should be shown and the url should be kept. So I can't simply redirect to the /articles/ page.

Answer 1

If you don't want to supply your own page templates and using your current code is not a possibility (because of how the loop loops through all the posts) I would recommend prompting the plugin users to select a page on which they want your plugin's content displayed (as an option on your plugin's setting page).

Once you have the ID of the page selected by the user, you would use the_content filter and modify the page's content, like this:

add_filter( 'the_content', 'wpse210003_render_archive' );
function wpse210003_render_archive( $content ) {
    // $selected_page_id is the page ID that the user has selected for displaying your plugin's content
    if ( is_page( $selected_page_id ) ) {
        // Get your post loop here and either add it to the existing page's content or throw away the content and just render your loop
        $content = 'My custom loop goes here';

        // Return your custom content here
        return $content;
    }
}

You will also be able to modify the title via the_title filter if you want to.

This way you can make sure that the layout of the page selected by user will always be correct and you will keep all the theme features associated with creating pages (sidebars, ad spaces etc.).