Re: [PHP Template] Re: [PHP3] template engine example document

Andrei Zmievski wrote: > > Hi, Nick. > > > I didn't like the difference between $ and @ though, they could be the > > same > > thing really, like: > > {section} > > <td>$articleTitle</td> > > <td>$articleDate</td> > > {/section} > > > > How would it be differently used. > > This is how we tried to do it originally. One of the problems with this > approach is that the engine would need to detect at run-time which > variables have multiple values so that it knows that it needs to loop > through them instead of simply printing out the value. Anything done at > run-time is slower, of course. Another reason we thought @ would be nice > is because it's visually clear which variables have multiple values and > are being looped through (@ looks like a loop). > > > There is one thing I would like shown to me though. If I want to skip > > tags > > when a value is empty, how would this be. Is this the only way: > > {if $value} > > $value<br> > > {/if} > > > > would be nicer to link the tag to the var somehow, like: > > {$value{<br>}} > > but maybe some better syntax. > > If it's a looping variable, you can do this: > > {section}@value<br>{/section} > This just answered your first question :-) Only looping variables affect section collapsing, so there needs to be a distinction between looping and single-value variables. That is why "$" and "@" were introduced. Maybe there is a better way? > because sections automatically collapse if variables inside them have no > values. > > > Also how would a blank value be changed to &nbsp; for example, can you > > define defaults for a value somehow, e.g.: > > {$value default="&nbsp;"} > > Once again, you'd probably want to do this only for looping variables, > when they run out of values. For single value variables, it wouldn't be > too useful. Unless you have a good example? > And to answer your question, variables can have a default value attribute just like your example. See the specs. Monte