Syntax for page_template using wp_insert_post

It should be the name of the php file in your theme, no path. Like “template.php”. Or “default” for no template.

Thanks for the reply, but that doesn’t seem to work for me. More specifics:

I’m using a custom theme page (page-proposal.php) in the theme directory properly named as “Page Proposal”. My custom form uses wp_insert_post as follows (in part):

$prop_page = array();
$prop_page[‘page_template’] = ‘page-proposal.php’;
wp_insert_post($prop_page);

The new page goes to “default” when I submit it, but in the actual Page editor GUI I can select “Page Proposal” from the template drop-down.

Any other ideas would be welcome!

To add to that: I checked the db and found the entries in the wp_postmeta ending up as

_wp_page_template default

though this is updated properly if I change the template in the GUI. This makes me think that my wp_insert_post() isn’t sending the page_template value to the right place.

I’ll post this question on the hacks forum too.

I don’t know what to tell you. Here’s the code in WordPress that actually deals with the page template:

if ( !empty($page_template) && 'page' == $post_type ) {
		$post->page_template = $page_template;
		$page_templates = get_page_templates();
		if ( 'default' != $page_template && !in_array($page_template, $page_templates) ) {
			if ( $wp_error )
				return new WP_Error('invalid_page_template', __('The page template is invalid.'));
			else
				return 0;
		}
		update_post_meta($post_ID, '_wp_page_template',  $page_template);
	}

As you can see, if you’re saving a page and have a page_template set (it’s extracted from that post array), then it updates the meta value to the value. So your code should work fine.

Looks like the get_page_templates() is not available all the times. I managed to work around by not setting the page_template at the first time but just calling the update_post_meta() with the $post_ID as soon as it returned it on insert.

I posted the code for this elsewhere on the forum on a similar stuff.