Smarty

devnul · Smarty Rookie Joined: 26 Aug 2003 Posts: 32

Hello,

I am a bit concerned abotu one aspect of Smarty and I'm not really sure what to do here...

Basically I am concerned that for large database queries that return hundreds/thousands of results that having to build that array in memory then have Smarty iterate over the array will consume substantially more memory then something like this:

andre · Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 10:45 am Post subject:

Perhaps you could write a custom block plugin which is able to iterate over you database result... Confused

messju · Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 10:50 am Post subject:

this is an issue if you really want to show hundreds/thousands of results on one webpage. but this is unlikely, not?

i think in nearly every case you can limit the results of the database to a subset of reasonable size that is needed for the template to display.

for example if you have 1000 elements to be paged over n-per-page with a template you don't need to assign all 1000 elements to the template, but just the number of the "active" page and the n elements for the "active" page.

boots · Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 12:49 pm Post subject:

Yes, you WILL loop over the data at least twice; once to collect it, once to display it; however, you have additional opportunities now. For example, if the query results are shared by many templates, you can serialize or otherwise cache them.

Also, when assigning to smarty, make sure you use assign_by_ref(), at least for large objects/arrays.

Besides, the fetch and print paradigm is exactly what Smarty is there to defeat/replace since it ties your application's logic to your display logic which is often not what you really want anyhow.

boots · Posted: Mon Sep 08, 2003 5:41 pm Post subject:

It occurs to me that you can use an assigned object that is used to retrieve the current record of interest to avoid the double iteration issue. Perhaps in conjunction with the fast recursion technique.

In other words, you application would set the object up, but it would be left to smarty to actually iterate the object.

devnul · Smarty Rookie Joined: 26 Aug 2003 Posts: 32

Of all of these i think the "LIMIT" method works best for me on this project (it seems to be the one which keeps the most code out of the template)....

Thanks guys and/or gals!

- Greg