Smarty

[unknewn]

What i am trying to do is a news system where the two last days are shown and all the articles in that day. ie:


Friday 21st November 2003
- title of post
content in this post
- title of second post
content in the second post

Thursday 20th November 2003
- title of post
content in this post
- title of second post
content in the second post

What i had as an array was the following:

[php:1:a486ccf24b]<?php
$smarty->assign("news", array(array("date" => "tstamp", "data" => array(array("title" => "Title 1", "content" => "Content Data 1", "author" => "John"),
array("title" => "Title 2", "content" => "Content Data 2", "author" => "John Doe"),
array("title" => "Title 3", "content" => "Content Data 3", "author" => "John Smith"))
)));
?>[/php:1:a486ccf24b]

Not sure if this is right, i could not make a section loop that would do this properly. So what i need is the right smarty code to do this, any help would be appreciated

[Enquest]

First of all Boots and Messju ... Will say use $smarty->assign_by_ref(...) this doesn't copy the variable and gives you some edge on speed.

Second. How I do this.

I pull my data out of the database. (MySql) In that mysql wich is in a lib. function I limit the amount of data. You can do that dynamicaly passing some date's to your funciton... What ever pull the data out of your mysql

$query = ...
$result = ...

then I make a while loop and in that while I assign each cycle to a array. Like this
while ($res = $result->fetchRow(DB_FETCHMODE_ASSOC)) {
$ret = $res
}
return $ret;

the result is that the two last dates are in an array

now I only have to assign it to smarty!
$smarty->assign_by_ref('data', $data);

In my tpl I make a make then
{section name=dat loop=data}
{$data[dat].title}<br>
{$data[dat].text} ...

{/section}

Volà hoped it helped!
_________________
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Learning my self by trying to help others

[messju]

[Enquest]

Can you explain me then exactly when to use $smarty->assign_by_ref

Because now I'm confused!

Onno
_________________
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Learning my self by trying to help others

[messju]

php's references are confusing. they are *very* confusing, IMHO.
that's why they suck.

you assign by ref if you want any modifications that are done to the variable be done on the original variable. you rarely need it because you normaly don't (should not) do any modifications of the data in your templates.

an example where i almost always use assign_by_ref() are objects. object's methods *may* be called during display. if so they *may* change the object's internal state and if so it's likely i want these changes be done on the object i have after display() returned.

[Enquest]

I could swear I read some where on this forum that its beter to use assign_by_ref then assign because then the var isn't copyied and you had some speed advancment. It did take less memory of the server also.

Small question then. Because I made now my site wit assign_by_ref should I change it back? to just assign?
_________________
-----------------------
Learning my self by trying to help others

[messju]

[boots]

FWIW, my understanding is that assign_by_ref will indeed be faster for most objects. Mainly since it means that the object doesn't need to be copied during the assign. This is not always true for arrays, but often is if the array is not small and particularly if it contains objects or other arrays. Simple types are definately faster using a normal assign.

YMMV

[unknewn]

ok.. well all that conversation.. and it didnt really help me much on my way..

[unknewn]

Ok, i managed to finally get it (yay) i used the following to do so for later reference if need be.