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

First, PHP is a templating language. Keep that in mind when you talk about using a template system for your PHP-based web applications.

The only 'real' argument that I've ever heard for using ANY templating engine was that they provide a simpler language for template manipulation which can be handy if you have template designers who don't know PHP and whom you don't trust to learn to use PHP judiciously.

Regarding these arguments, I would argue that if your template designers are not competent to learn enough PHP for template design, you should probably consider finding new template designers. Additionally, PHP itself provides a different syntax for control statements that you might use in a template versus in code. For example:

<? foreach($array as $key => $val): ?>
    <?= $val ?>
<? endforeach; ?>

VS:

<?php
    foreach($array as $key => $val) {
        echo $val;
    }

?>

Personally, I believe that templating engines arose in PHP because:

1. That's way that other languages do it
2. Better PHP programmers realized that they needed a way to enforce separation between presentation and application logic and templates were an easy way to do this.

The first reason is just kinda silly. The second reason can be overcome with a little self-control and even a rudimentary understanding of the necessity of separating layers in an application. The MVC design pattern is one way of approaching this problem. As far as exercising some self-control, my rule is that only necessary loops and if statements get used as well as functions that filter, escape, format the output for the screen.

Having used Smarty extensively, I can honestly say that it always presented me with more hurdles to get over than it did solutions. If anything, switching to PHP-based templates is what has actually decreased development time for both templates and code.

Answer 2

Using a Smarty or not is more or less a philosophical position.

I use it, although I don't use much functionality. Using it this way, templates tend to be be very simple. Pass an associative array with parameters, iterate through its components and insert required elements in the result page. This keeps templates clean and (hopefully) free of business logic.

Additionally, extending Smarty is quite simple.

As an example, I added a styles parameter to the fetch() to have a fetchUsingStyle(). This allows me to switch between different layouts of a site quite easily.

Furthermore, my fetchUsingStyle() searches various locations for a template: First tries to find the current style. If not found, it tries to load the template using a default style. Last, it tries to locate a pure static dummy file, a placeholder for something to be implemented later.

Answer 3

Personally I use Blitz for templating. On the site the author claims it is the fastest templating engine and provides a (biased?) chart over performance between different templating systems for PHP. I haven't used smarty myself, but this may give you some hints on its performance.

http://alexeyrybak.com/blitz/blitz_en.html

Answer 4

Try to Use Smarty with MVC pattern such as Codeigniter , Its better than core PHP

Answer 5

As far as I know Smarty is one of the best template engines speed wise. Maybe it takes a while to get used to it. But if you are not working on the system alone and the amount of html and style files is huge it speeds up the development significantly.

While working on my last project the design was changes a couple of times but logics was the same. I guess that's the best example when Smarty or any other template engine helps a lot.