Smarty

[jtm]

I'm getting some data from a database which I then insert to a template.
I'm also using $smarty->caching = 1; so the page is cached and everything works fine.

But, when the cache expires, the php connects to the database but what if the database is down or there is some other error which prevents getting the critical data which needs to be inserted to the template? Is there any way to force smarty to use the old cache even if it's expired?

Think about the following pseudo code:

[messju]

[jtm]

That looked great but I've come cross to another problem.

As seen in thread http://www.phpinsider.com/smarty-forum/viewtopic.php?t=1343&start=0, there's a block function which did a bit the same.

I figured that I'd need something like a {cache} ... {/cache} block function which would also check if code inside would set some error template variable to true which would force the cache to use the old file.

The code which boots posted there did nearly that. The only drawback is that I don't need subtemplates here, I just need to cache the data inside those {cache} tags. It would look dumb if I just create a template which have nothing but one $insert_data_here variable. How can I create cache files by myself in a block function so that I can also use is_cached etc functions to check if they still are valid etc?

[boots]

hi jtm.

First off, messju's solution above is very nice

On to your last comments: I'm not sure if the plugin I proposed does exactly what you say. Just to be clear, though, it does not require you to create subtemplates--the plugin literally creates the subtemplate based on the block.

So if your template was index.tpl and you had the following block in that template:

[jtm]

I tried the code but I'm not quite satisfacted with the results.

It seems that smarty can't search template files from multiple source directories. I have one directory where my templates resists (which I have manually wrote) and I don't want templates, which are created by this {sec} block directove, to be created in the same directory.

I can easily modify the sec block handler to create the template files to a different directory but I can't make smarty look them from there. Any suggestions?

I also think that it could work better if the sec block directive could just store the data inside the block to a cache file, without using templates in the middle. Is this possible? can a plugin create cache files on it's own so that they can be used with is_cached etc?

EDIT: After a short discussion with messju in the IRC, I think that I got the right way to do this. I'll post my results later =)

- jtm

[boots]

jtm-- heh, yeah, it is definately not a fully developed solution. If you have improvements, I'd appreciate you posting them You may also consider posting them into the original thread if you think they are appropriate for others trying to solve atu's original query.

Cheers!