Create Page that uses specific template

Question

I need to programmatically create a page that uses a specific/custom template as defined programmatically. Both the page and template are created/used by my plugin.

The plugin files include a page template. The plugin code (with a button press) will create the page ('mycustompage') (similar to the technique here Add custom template page programmatically ).

But I need to specify the template used by that page. The page has to use the template in my_plugin_folder/templates/mytemplate.php . The template cannot be in the current theme folder structure.

Once the page is created, then the plugin will open a new tab with www.example.com/mycustompage (assume plugin code creates a unique/unused page name).

How do I specify the template that will be used by the programmatically-created-page when I call the created page (as in www.example.com/mycustompage ? And, the template to use is not in the current theme folder.

Added

Note that I am creating HTML code 'manually' by using The Loop to output post content. The HTML code is not being displayed on a WP page. So there is no WP JS used that converts emoji HMTL characters into the emoji graphic.

If I was to create a Page that uses a simple template to display only posts (the template does not use wp_header/sidebars/footers, etc), and then display that page, the emoji are shown as graphics in the browser. If I copy that page (in the browser) and paste that into Word, the graphics are in Word -- because they are on the browser page.

But, I am creating all of the HTML (of the post content) with PHP code. And I haven't found a good way to convert emoji HTML code to emoji graphics.

So, I figured that (instead of creating HTML code for the entire page) using a simple template that is used by a Page that I create programatically would allow WP to use that Page (and all posts content) that would show emoji graphics. But templates are normally in the theme folder, and as a plugin, I need to use my template (that is stored in the plugin's folders). (I assume that it is not 'polite' for my plugin to write a template file to the theme's folder.)

So, the question: create a Page programatically that uses a template file that is contained in the plugin's folder, not the theme's folder. Using a template allows the emoji graphics to be displayed by WP. Then I can copy/paste the generated page into Word, and the graphics will be there.

Answer 1

The question was about how to use a template that is not in the theme's folder, but in a plugin's folder. The template needs to be used for a specific page. The need for the answer doesn't matter. There is a need; how do I do it?

And the answer is to use the template_include filter (see here) . Here's my explanation of my answer:

The plugin that I am developing creates a page. That page then needs to use a template that the plugin provides. I could do it by

• creating a whole new theme (too much work - overkill);

• copying the template to the theme's folder (not polite to the theme);

• creating a child theme (overkill again);

• putting the code in the functions.php file (not polite or good to edit a theme's function.php file; better in a child theme, but that's no good);

• setting the pages meta to specify a template by name (but that requires a template in the theme's folder);

• or changing the template used by the Page (hence the question).

The code I used to do this is as follows. The template file I want to use is in the plugin's templates folder. My plugin has previously created the "My Custom Page" page.

// include our template
add_filter( 'template_include', 'use_our_page_template', 99 );

function use_our_page_template( $template ) {

    if ( is_page( 'My Custom Page' )  ) {
        $new_template =  plugin_dir_path( __FILE__ ) . 'templates/mycustomtemplate.php';
        return $new_template;
    }
return;

The is_page() function can use the ID# of the page, or it's title, or it's slug (see docs). I use the page title as my parameter.

Note that if you edit the "My Custom Page", you will not see the name of the template being used in the Template field of the editing screen. That doesn't bother me, but could probably be fixed. Doesn't matter; my template is used to output the page.

I put the above code in my plugin's code. The filter is available as long as the plugin is enabled. Yeah, maybe a slight performance hit because the filter is enabled for the whole site, but acceptable to me. And I could probably change the page name to make it fully unique.

So, my solution solves the question: how to set a Page to use a template outside of the theme's folder. The other answers, while containing some useful information, did not answer the original question.

And it works.

(Note: this question from 2010 pointed me to the ultimate solution.)

Answer 2

I'm going to ignore your attempted solution and address the original problem:

Emoji are converted into HTML, preventing them from showing when copy pasted into MS Word

This is because a script turns all the emoji on the page into SVG icons. Creating child pages for every single page, and a dedicated template to solve this problem is completely unnecessary.

If you look at the source of the page, the emoji are there, intact, but get converted into SVG images by javascript:

Here we see they are saved as emoji:

Here they are intact in the pages source:

So The Real Problem

WP Emoji takes the emoji that you can copy into Word, and turns them into SVG icons so that users on browsers and OS's without emoji support can still see them. This breaks copy paste in MS Word.

Of note, it does not have the same effect elsewhere, e.g. here is Sublime Text:

Google Chrome:

😱🔮💧

Solution: Disable the WP Emoji script

You can disable this in form fields using a HTML class:

If you are a developer working on forms, you might want to disable this behaviour in your input fields and textareas. You can use the class attribute with 'wp-exclude-emoji' for this.

But for general content, this code snippet will do the trick:

remove_action('wp_head', 'print_emoji_detection_script', 7);
remove_action('wp_print_styles', 'print_emoji_styles');

There are also plugins to do this for you. The end result is that emoji are no longer swapped out for images:

You should now be able to copy paste to Word without issue, and without a complicated setup involving additional templates and child pages

There are other avenues too:

• Add a copy button that when clicked, fetches the original source from the REST API and puts it in the clipboard
• When text is selected, convert the image icons back to emoji using their alt text
• Use a modified wp emoji script that only converts if it detects that the users system is unable to render emojis. That user won't get an emoji in Word anyway no matter what you do.