Smarty

[toma]

I'm attempting to embed data by retreiving it from a function based on the user request. For instance:

{Table.Column} may display everything in that column, {Table.Column|PageName} may be used to format the column.
(this is oversimplified but you get the gist)...I need a default function and modifier handler.


My first thought was to use a prefilter and replace matches with a function call
// Get smarty delimiters
$ldq = preg_quote($smarty->left_delimiter, '~');
$rdq = preg_quote($smarty->right_delimiter, '~');

/* Gather all DatabaseTags */
preg_match_all("~{$ldq}\s*([A-Z].*?)\s*{$rdq}~s", $source_content, $_match);

However this method doesn't address modifiers.
Before I really dig into Smarty hacking, does anyone have ideas on this?

p.s. my head isn't big enough to wrap around this:
preg_match('~^(?' . $this->_num_const_regexp . '|' . $this->_obj_call_regexp . '|' . $this->_var_regexp
. '|\/?' . $this->_reg_obj_regexp . '|\/?' . $this->_func_regexp . ')(' . $this->_mod_regexp . '*))
(?:\s+(.*))?$
~xs', $template_tag, $match)) {

[boots]

Hi Toma.

You mean like an equivalent to __call() ? Maybe instead of filtering, go the whole nine-yards and modify the Smarty code to call user callback as a last-chance before issuing an unrecognized tag error.

But do you really want to do that as functions/modifiers? Should you not rather use {$table.column}? If so, you can always provide a PHP5 overloaded db object that does lazy loading. It would lengthen your example to {$db.table.column} (or maybe {$db->table.column}) which seems like a nice compromise to me.

As for the modifiers, doesn't the normal autoloading already work? Or do you intend to redefine the meaning of modifier syntax here?

Best Regards!