Re: PHP, Smarty, and Text

VamVan wrote:

On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 6:49 PM, Daniel Kolbo <kolb0057@umn.edu> wrote:

Hello, I've been using PHP and Smarty for several years now and I am happy with this "division" of data from presentation. With this philosophy in mind, i am a bit perplexed as to how to handle the text on my sites. That is, the text is data, so i am motivated to store the text in a database, files, or the like, but then text is loaded with little markup nuances (random italics/weight/colors, etc...) that make template design rather ugly. This motivates me to put markup (maybe even my own brand of markup) around the text, and to store this markup-text combination in a database. But I don't like this either, because a lot of the people writing the content/text know word/writer not markup. So i am motivated to have them save their text as .html, and I parse this file and modify accordingly. However, i don't like this either as not all word/writer styles are 1-to-1 with CSS. Without any options I am back to thinking "hard code" the text with markup in included templates, but it hurts just thinking of updating/modifying. I have looked (briefly) at Web Content Management Systems, but this seems like overkill really, maybe i'm ignorant. What would the community suggest? The text can take on many forms, introduction text, about text, product information, articles, blurbs, (some changes daily, some doesn't) etc...where does all this text live in 'properly' designed site. Thanks in advance, dK

For specific requirements like this. I think it is very OK to set some rules when the user inputs the text. You can make the simple text area and make some custom tags for ur application only. For example <bold> in ur application means <b> in html. This way you can str_replace all that user enters in to watever class or text u want to to make it look pretty. Its an easier way and reliable way because you have the authority to validate user input if it does not match certian criteria that you may need. I don't know you can never blame user for what he enters. Not every user is computer literate and our code should always cater the needs of this kind of user and I feel its perfectly ok to tell the user to enter proper data if it doesnot meet ur standards. Thanks, V

perhaps you need to make a high level internal decision in you're own brain.. decide if the "text" is in fact text, or is it fragments of html - decide which it is then treat it accordingly - if you decide it's html then all you need to do is sanitize it and save it wherever (database, flat files, anything); - note: i often think it's wise to save a plain text version of all html fragments in addition, saves you repeating code and is smaller if you want to save it in a fulltext indexed column (more space in the db sicne two versions, but faster better indexes as only on the plaintext)