Re: smarty

Well, I can't say that it's a 'good' tutorial, it's a little messy, but it's along the lines of how I am using it ... If you want to have a look, I put together a page and some explanations and stuffed it into an archive (162Kb) You can downlad it at http://www.wegotit.at/sm_demo.zip If you're going to look at it, drop me a line to let me know if it's too confusing or if you could actually make something out of it :) Richard Thursday, April 8, 2004, 9:11:06 AM, you wrote: > Does anyone have a 'good' tutorial about Smarty. The one > available on smarty.php.net is really basic... > Vincent > -----Original Message----- > From: Robert Cummings [mailto:robert@interjinn.com] > Sent: jeudi 8 avril 2004 4:02 > To: Kelly Hallman > Cc: PHP-General > Subject: Re: [PHP] smarty > On Wed, 2004-04-07 at 21:35, Kelly Hallman wrote: >> Apr 8 at 10:26am, Justin French wrote: >> > PHP itself is a great templating language :) >> > <h1><?=$title?></h1> >> > <table> >> > <? foreach($staff as $person): ?><tr> >> > <td><?=$person['firstname']?> >> > <?=$person['surname']?></td> >> > <td><?=$person['role']?></td> >> > <td><?=$person['phone']?></td> >> > <td><a >> >> href='mailto:<?=$person['email']?>'><?=$person['email']?></td> >> > </tr><? endforeach; ?></table> >> >> Uhhh, yeah--that's not a templating, that's called spaghetti code :) >> >> You get the concept. Smarty, as you know, basically takes a Smarty >> template and writes PHP code similar to what you've done above, then >> writes out the .php file, and includes it when you render your template. >> So you'd get nearly the same effect by writing the PHP as a separate file >> and including it as your last step, and it acts as your display logic. >> >> That may be acceptable to you, as a PHP programmer. If you're the only one >> who ever needs to modify your templates then that's great, more power to >> you. I'm sure that you would have no problem having many levels of nesting >> all over the place and not screwing anything up. So be it. But that's you. >> >> I guarantee another person not as adept at PHP will screw that code up, >> and there is less potential for that with a Smarty template. If you know >> PHP as well as yourself, it should be plain to see how Smarty is just a >> wrapper over PHP that makes templates easier to build and maintain. >> For a designer or non-coder, Smarty will be easier to learn than PHP. >> >> Unless your needs never exceed the very basics like you have demonstrated >> above, you'll be hosed when another person needs to modify your template. >> Which goes back to a templating truism never in dispute: if this is all >> you want templating for, it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. >> >> However, there are practical limitations on what you can easily accomplish >> with this approach, and Smarty addresses those issues. And you're worse >> off if you invest a lot into building your sites this way, and then >> realize you need some better templating strategies later. >> >> > You can still separate your logic from your presentation, template >> > designers can still use quick, simple "tags" to include code, and the >> > upside is that people familiar with PHP don't need to learn ANOTHER >> > language (that's what Smarty is) -- they can dive straight in. >> >> You can consider it it's own language, but really it's more like PHP with >> different formatting. Which is why it's different than what you're doing >> above--it's designed to facilitate templating. Your method is just poking >> in variables and PHP into inline'd HTML. It works, but you're missing some >> of the power of Smarty if you think that's all it's good for. >> >> > The question is, do you want to give your templater designers full >> > access to the power of PHP, or not. >> >> In other words: are your template designers already good PHP programmers? >> It's not just hype, it solves real problems, even if you don't have them. > Smarty is a bit of a hack too... why do I need to declare my templates > within the PHP code? If I'm an HTML designer I'd like to create a new > page, include templates, use some data that's been made available and > have it all in the template. I sure as heck wouldn't want to have joe > programmer edit the main page, add support for importing my template. > This is the thing that bugs me about Smarty, its still got that hanging > dependency. And it's still got to include all those templates within the > source code. > InterJinn is superior in this respect. You use XML tags to import other > templates, you use XML tags to load modules and components, and you use > XML tags to do almost any kind of expansion you want. Of course, you can > go ahead and use something else, InterJinn provides the ability to plug > in custom compilers. InterJinn compiles to PHP code, includes are > INCLUDED at compile time not at run time. So given this scheme anyone > working on the HTML is already familiar with the syntax... hard to go > wrong with: > <jinn:template path="topnav.template"/> > Hell you can even overload HTML tags. Not only that but Interjinn allows > recursive includes of templates and source files, and these includes can > be relative to the outer nested template or source file. Furthermore, > there's nothing forcing the use of the InterJinn application layer so > InterJinn can be used entirely for it's templating features, in which > case it provides a faster resulting PHP page than using PHP include(). > Cheers, > Rob. > -- > .------------------------------------------------------------. > | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | > :------------------------------------------------------------: > | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | > | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | > | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | > | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | > | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | > `------------------------------------------------------------'