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Smarty
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hughprior
Smarty Rookie
Joined: 07 May 2003
Posts: 10
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 Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 3:50 pm Post subject: Various Smarty design questions: fetch, template etc. |
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I'm used to using a template system which has the basic syntax:
$tpl = new Template("my_tpl.htm");
$tpl->assign("INFO", $info);
$html = $tpl->get();
A few questions:
a) Why does Smarty do the assign of the template file on the fetch() rather than, say, on the creation of a Smarty object? What's the logic here?
b) Why the term fetch() rather than something like get()?
I don't mind converting all my code to use the new Smarty system, but I just wondered what the design ideas were that made the difference. Am I the only person to be used to this different 'standard' (ha! I know there are about 10000 different template patterns - if nothing else, at least Smarty should kill off this problem, hooray. By the way, I'm here 'cause I'd rather change to Smarty than fix a bug in the existing system I use)?
Hugh Prior
webmaster of http://www.localpin.com when it's up ;0)
P.S. Is caching to a MySQL table possible/in plan? Sometimes this is more convenient (e.g. shared hosts do not allow file writes, more control over cached items with queries etc). |
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Brian
Smarty Rookie
Joined: 29 Apr 2003
Posts: 21
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 4:48 pm Post subject: |
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There are differing paradigms.
| Quote: | | a) Why does Smarty do the assign of the template file on the fetch() rather than, say, on the creation of a Smarty object? What's the logic here? |
Well, in this case, you can instantiate the object and re-use it for multiple templates without having to create new template objects. Say your page is made up of 4 templates - instead of making four different template objects, you just make one, and call fetch() as many times as you want. Of course, other template engines probably also have that capability (re-setting the file throughout the execution of the script) - if not, most could be easily modified (since they don't fetch the file till their get() or fetch() function anyway).
| Quote: | | b) Why the term fetch() rather than something like get()? |
Is this really important? You can always make a child class (you should anyway so every time you upgrade smarty, you don't have to go in and modify all the vars) that has a get() method that calls fetch()... and a set() method that calls assign(). This doesn't seem like a template/smarty design question... |
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Wom.bat
Smarty Pro
Joined: 24 Apr 2003
Posts: 107
Location: Munich, Germany
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 5:24 pm Post subject: |
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| Brian: but variable assigns are kept, then... you can access variables assigned in every following template... I have a special assign function, which stores varnames in an array and after a display() or a fetch(), it disables caching and does a clear_assign() on all variables previously assigned... |
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Brian
Smarty Rookie
Joined: 29 Apr 2003
Posts: 21
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 10:06 pm Post subject: |
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| I don't understand your point. If you WANT to use separate objects, you are of course allowed to do that as well... |
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boots
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2003
Posts: 5611
Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 10:37 pm Post subject: |
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Hi Hughprior.
I just thought I would add to what was already said:
| Quote: | | a) Why does Smarty do the assign of the template file on the fetch() rather than, say, on the creation of a Smarty object? What's the logic here? |
Smarty assigned data is persistent for the entire Smarty session. This is useful, for example, when there are tempaltes that include other templates. It also allows your application programmer to focus more on the structure of the application data without worrying which templates it will get assigned to. In a way it changes the focus of the data API away from the templates and puts it back on the application.
| Quote: | | b) Why the term fetch() rather than something like get()? |
Why? Because fetch() is better, of course !  One thing about get is that it usually implies a straight operation (simply get the data) whereas when we are getting from a template, we are actually doing a transformation.
It is easy to extend Smarty to other syntaxes or uses. To emulate your syntax, you can use the following wrapper:
| Code: | MySmarty extends Smarty
{
var $tpl = '';
function MySmarty($tpl='')
{
$this->tpl = $tpl;
}
function get()
{
$this->fetch($this->tpl);
}
}
$tpl = new MySmarty("my_tpl.htm");
$tpl->assign("INFO", $info);
$html = $tpl->get(); |
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Brian
Smarty Rookie
Joined: 29 Apr 2003
Posts: 21
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 11:36 pm Post subject: |
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| And one drawback to "generally using one tpl var and setting the tpl at the end" is that you can run into namespacing issues. If you had different TPL objects for each "section" of your site, they could each have their own title, set in whichever order you prefer... wheras, with smarty, if you are reusing tpl var names (such as title), you have to be especially careful about the order in which you assign, fetch, assign, fetch, etc. |
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boots
Administrator
Joined: 16 Apr 2003
Posts: 5611
Location: Toronto, Canada
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| Posted: Wed May 07, 2003 11:55 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | | with smarty, if you are reusing tpl var names (such as title), you have to be especially careful about the order in which you assign, fetch, assign, fetch, etc. |
Perhaps. But since Smarty provides very convenient syntax access to arrays (like {$var.el.el}) I just put often used items into arrays.
imagine:
{$PAGE.title}
{$CONTENT.title}
etc. |
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