Wordpress override archive page template using a plugin

Question

I am editing the archives template of my wordpress archive pages for specific post types and taxonomies only and I want to package it all in one plugin instead of adding it on my functions folder and adding all files inside my themes folder. Is there a way to do this on wordpress? I am not sure I looked in the documentation.

Answer 1

You should create a filter to the archive_template template hook.

function use_custom_template($tpl){
  if ( is_post_type_archive ( 'books' ) ) {
    $tpl = plugin_dir_path( __FILE__ ) . '/tpl/dir/books-archive.php';
  }
  return $tpl;
}

add_filter( 'archive_template', 'use_custom_template' ) ;

Answer 2

It is an old question that I'm answering but I didn't found an ultimate solution on the web. Here is what I came up with:

<?php

namespace Itoll\Core\Includes\WooCommerce;

defined( 'ABSPATH' ) || die();

class WC_Templates {
    private $overwritten_templates = [
        'cart/cart.php',
        'cart/cart-shipping.php',
        'cart/proceed-to-checkout-button.php',
        'checkout/form-checkout.php',
        'checkout/form-coupon.php',
        'checkout/form-pay.php',
        'checkout/form-shipping.php',
        'checkout/payment.php',
        'checkout/payment-method.php',
        'checkout/review-order.php',
        'loop/orderby.php',
        'archive-product.php',
    ];

    public function __construct() {
        add_filter( 'template_include', [ $this, 'woocommerce_locate_template' ], 99, 1 );
    }

    public function woocommerce_locate_template( $template ) {
        // Get the template from this plugin, if it exists.
        preg_match( '/.*woocommerce\/(templates\/)?(.*)/', $template, $_path );
        $relative_path = $_path[2];
        if (
            in_array( $relative_path, $this->overwritten_templates )
             && file_exists( ITOLL_CORE_WC_TPL_DIR . $relative_path )
        ) {
            $template = ITOLL_CORE_WC_TPL_DIR . $relative_path;
        }

        return $template;
    }
}

In this way, I added the overwritten files in the /wp-content/plugins/my-custom-plugin/woocommerce/ and defined ITOLL_CORE_WC_TPL_DIR constant for it.

Using regex you can get the template path like what I wrote in the $overwritten_templates.

Just check if you overwrite the template and if so return the new path from your plugin.

If you don't know what ITOLL_CORE_WC_TPL_DIR exactly is:

trailingslashit( plugin_dir_path( __FILE__ ) . 'woocommerce' )