Creating a wordpress virtual page with a function and page template - php

Question

I'm trying to create a virtual contact page on wordpress. All the necessary data will be stored in a page template. But in my function I don't know how to link to the file.
When the user does to domain.com/contact I would like to redirect him to the contact.php file.
So far I got this function to work and show content from this line $post->post_content = 'page template: contact.php'; but I would like to show the content from templates/contact.php
add_filter( 'the_posts', 'generate_contact_page', -10 );
function generate_contact_page( $posts ) {
global $wp, $wp_query;
$url_slug = 'contact'; // URL slug of the contact page
if ( ! defined( 'CONTACT_PAGE' ) && ( strtolower( $wp->request ) == $url_slug ) ) {
// stop interferring with other $posts arrays on this page (only works if the sidebar is rendered *after* the main page)
define( 'CONTACT_PAGE', true );
// create a contact virtual page
$post = new stdClass;
$post->post_author = 1;
$post->post_name = $url_slug;
$post->guid = home_url() . '/' . $url_slug;
$post->post_title = 'Contact page';
$post->post_content = 'page template: contact.php';
$post->ID = -999;
$post->post_type = 'page';
$post->post_status = 'static';
$post->comment_status = 'closed';
$post->ping_status = 'open';
$post->comment_count = 0;
$post->post_date = current_time( 'mysql' );
$post->post_date_gmt = current_time( 'mysql', 1 );
$posts = NULL;
$posts[] = $post;
// make wpQuery believe this is a real page too
$wp_query->is_page = true;
$wp_query->is_singular = true;
$wp_query->is_home = false;
$wp_query->is_archive = false;
$wp_query->is_category = false;
unset( $wp_query->query[ 'error' ] );
$wp_query->query_vars[ 'error' ] = '';
$wp_query->is_404 = false;
}
return $posts;
}
How can I achieve something like this? Maybe you know a better solution ?

Answer 1

So for template output you can try this function
function get_template_output($slug = '', $name = '') {
ob_start();
get_template_part($lug, $name);
return ob_get_clean();
}
And then to assign content you will use
$content = get_template_output('templates/', 'contact');