Smarty

[sma]

Our site is obscenely dynamic, so we make heavy use of {insert} for dynamic information, and caching of everything else. Currently, it's impossible to run the output of the insert statement through a gauntlet of modifiers, short of writing our own processor and bastardizing _run_mod_handler. This is specifically a problem when the same information needs different modifications based on its use.

[U.Tews]

Use the assign attribute of the insert tag to store its result in a Samrty varibale. You can run this variable then through the required modifiers.

[sma]

That works wonders, unless you're using caching. And {insert} is useless outside of caching.

[U.Tews]

You can make the processing of that variable dynamic. See example 14-11 of documentation.

[sma]

Is that more or less efficient than using the builtin insert function? We already have a non-cache block called, oddly enough, {nocache}. Every time that block is called, though, Smarty has to go through and process everything in it anew. An {insert} function could bypass most of the processing.

[U.Tews]

My thought was that when caching is used you use just {nocache}($varfrominsert|modifiers}{/nocache}.

I don't think that an {insert} is quicker then a {nocache}. What processing could you bypass with an {insert} ?

[Celeb]

To avoid the assignment you could do this (I think):

[U.Tews]

Celeb a modifier on a block function does not work but also doesn't throw an error.

[U.Tews]

Okay, on block functions modifiers have to be placed on the closing tag.

[sma]

A block has to read through every last byte in the stuff between to see if Smarty needs to process or not. With insert, there's no in between stuff. There's no unnecessary subprocessing looking for variables, blocks, includes, conditions, etc. Just the single command that ends with '}' and the PHP function.

[U.Tews]

Modifiers on block functions normally will run on every content between the block tags, even if it is just pain text.

However if you have caching enabled the {insert} tag will be compiled to a place holder (cache insert). In this case the modifier will run on this place holder and not as expected on the content of the {insert} tag. That is what I wanted to say.

[U.Tews]

sma comming back to your initial problem.

Why don't you use instead of an insert function a registered functin or plugin?

You could use it dynamically with modifiers like this

[sma]

For {nocache}{function}{/nocache}, smarty would have to process the nocache, then process the function and any modifiers attached to it. By making it so insert functions can call modifiers, you remove one step of that. Further, it doesn't have to search for the close tag, since inserts don't have them.

[U.Tews]

sma I have spent some time to look for a solution for that. The problem is how to attach the modifiers to the {insert...} tag syntax....

I know that the {nocache} {/nocache} solution is not the most optimal, because it does require one additional disk read. The parsing of the {nocache} tags is not the problem because this happens just once when the template is being compiled.

[sma]

Could create a new operator that applies modifiers to the output of a function, which could also work with custom functions that take input. For example:
{insert name="graph" x="a" y="b";modifier|modifier|modifier}
and
{somefunction arg1="word" arg2=2785;modifier|modifier|modifier}


...and/or just create a php public function to be called by the insert function.