how to use Smarty better with PHP?

Question

I found that using Smarty with PHP, sometimes extra time will need to be used for

1) using quite different syntax than PHP itself
2) need to check small cases, b

Answer 1

Why use a template engine when you can just use your html files and inject php code where you need it? you can do this with Psttt! templating engine for php

full source code here http://github.com/givanz/psttt

Answer 2

I like template engines and think they should be used, but in the particular case of Smarty, I think it's waste of time, because it's not a significant improvement over PHP as templating language:

• The new syntax is still based around old concept of special tags inserted in random places in the document.
• Because Smarty does not understand HTML's syntax/structure, it cannot not help you to create valid/well-formed HTML. Smarty's tags violate HTML's syntax, so once you add them, other standard tools can't help you either.
• Smarty's output, just like in PHP, is insecure (unescaped) by default and you have to remember to add |escape everywhere where you output data in HTML.

There's one particular PHP template engine that I've fallen in love with, which fixes all those problems: PHPTAL.

It's still something new you have to learn, and it's a depenency for your application, but I think having XSS and ill-formedness problems solved makes it worth the trouble.

PHPTAL just like Smarty is compiled once to PHP and cached, so performance is comparable to raw PHP.

Answer 3

I don't like templating engines. I find them very lossy and resource-intensive for PHP.

With MediaWiki, around version 1.6.x we backed off using Smarty by default and just use PHP's built-in templating, with a great improvement in performance.

I've found that most of what people want to do with a templating system (add links, change colors, remove text or sections of the page) are better done with a simple system of event hooks.

Laconica, the open microblogging platform, doesn't do any templating by default. We have a plugin for people who are crazy for templating.

Answer 4

Pros

• No PHP in your HTML files (Allows both PHP and HTML identing)
• Pipes {$var|default:"None selected"} {$var|urlencode}
• Foreachelse: {foreach item=row from=$results}{$row.name}<br>{foreachelse}No results{/foreach}
• Themable websites/pages (Using only CSS has it limits)

Cons

• Other language syntax
• Not always obvious code {"Y-m-d"|strftime:$timestamp} {$array|@var_dump}
• Slight overhead

I can highly recommend the "template" approach(mVc), but both Smarty and plain PHP are up for the task.

Answer 5

Smarty is certainly one of the best template engines out there. In my experience though people would be well advised to think their use cases through more thoroughly before they use any templating engine on top of PHP at all.

First, PHP itself is perfect for templates. Pretty much the only justification for using another templating engine is if you're allowing untrusted users to create or edit templates, since they could execute all kinds of badness. So, if your project has user-editable templates, use Smarty. If not, stick with PHP.

If your problem is separation of code and layout, I suggest you look into implementing a lightweight MVC-style execution model. Or, to put it more condescendingly, if you have deeper logic code in your template, it's probably time to do some refactoring.

Performance is another consideration. Yes, rendering a Smarty template comes with a cost. But after it's done, the output should be cached, leading you to improved execution times. Same goes for PHP templates. PHP allows you to implement all kinds of granular caching models through the use of its output buffers. But beware of premature optimization: do that only after you're code complete and have identified what the actual bottlenecks are!

The biggest cost when using Smarty or any other engine comes in the form of developer time. It's another layer of complexity and inevitably you will find yourself in situations where you have to trick the engine into doing what you could have accomplished within pure PHP all along.

Answer 6

Using Smarty as a templating engine will probably not be as performant as not using it, as it is an extra layer of software, i.e., a templating language on top of a, erm, another templating language. On the other hand, if you use the caching feature properly you could realise overall performance gains.

Smarty templates are pre-compiled before being output to the browser, which involves writing temporary files to disk. This step surely penalises performance, at least a little.

If you are confident in your ability to keep implementation and presentation separate, and have no real interest in server-side caching, you should probably just use pure php templating. Some MVC frameworks such as Zend Framework have their own PHP-like templating systems.

On the other hand, smarty is a decent way to enforce a neat separation of presentation from implementation, particularly where it's unclear as to what belongs where. It might help discipline you to enforce this necessary separation.

That said, I use Smarty in most of my PHP projects, as it reminds me of Java-Server Tag Libraries (JSTL), which I'm very, very used to, and fond of.