Creating a default Custom Post Template that a Theme can override

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I’m in the midst of building a WordPress Plugin that adds a custom post type, for which I’d like to include a default template to display. Essentially, this is an event management plugin, and the custom post type is for the Events. There’s a handful of custom meta fields, as well as a child post type (Performances), so without a default template to display them, using it would be pretty unfriendly. But I would like theme designers to be able to create their own templates for these post types if desired.

Is there a way to use the the template provided with my plugin unless the theme provides its own template? What’s the best practice for doing so?

Edit:

Following the advice of Peter Rowell, I caught the template_redirect action and, if the post type was one of mine and a template for it did not exist in the current theme, defaulted to the plugin’s template:

class FestivityTemplates {

  public static function determineTemplate(){
    global $post;
    $standard_type = strpos($post->post_type, 'fest_');

    if(is_single() && $standard_type !== false) {
      FestivityTemplates::loadSingleTemplate($post);
    }
  }

  private static function loadSingleTemplate($post) {
    $template_name="single-".$post->post_type.'.php';
    $template = locate_template(array($template_name), true);
    if(empty($template)) {
      include(WP_PLUGIN_DIR . '/Festivity/lib/templates/' . $template_name);
      exit();
    }
  }
}

add_action('template_redirect', array('FestivityTemplates', 'determineTemplate'));

3 Answers
3

You might want to look at the routine that WP uses for this: locate_template(). It is in wp-includes/theme.php and is called from a number of functions in that file. Those functions are used by wp-includes/template-loader.php to select the correct type of template based on the current page and then walk up the theme hierarchy looking for a match.

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