Beginning with the Smarty Template Engine

[Affix]

Smarty is a PHP Template engine that will allow you to create a PHP Backend without using full HTML within your PHP Files. Smarty will use a cache directory to store the template cache for each session and clear it once it reaches a certain age.

Smarty has build in loop functions to minimise the use of PHP Code from within your template documents. In this tutorial I am going to show you how to create a simple page To output an array using a loop in Smarty. The array will be outputted in a simple HTML Table to show how smarty works.

Ok So we need the smarty Libs to do this you can retreive the latest smarty distribution from Smarty : Template Engine

Once you have downloaded it Upload it onto your web server or put it in your WAMPP/LAMPP htdocs directory.

On your server create 2 new folders with the following configuration.

Dir Name                      CHMOD
-----------------------------------
html                            665
cache                         777

Ok now create a new file and call it config.php and place the follwoing code into the file

<?php
  $dir = dirname(__FILE__); //Just to get the directory we are in

  define ("SMARTY_DIR", "<WHERE YOU STORE SMARTY>"); //Use an Absolute path (/home/<user>/htdocs/smarty on linux)

  require_once (SMARTY_DIR . "Smarty.class.php");
  $smarty = new Smarty;
  $smarty->compile_dir = "$dir/cache";
  $smarty->template_dir = "$dir/html";
?>

Now we have our basic smarty config setup we are ready to use smarty to output some data.

Create a new file call it index.php this is where our aarray is gonna be and It will call out template file.

<?php
  require_once ("./config.php");
  $phpGods = array("Affix","Jordan","CodeCall"); 
  $smarty->assign("gods", $phpGods); //Here we assign the Array to a smarty var
  $smarty->display ("array.tpl"); //This will display the file array.tpl from our html directory
?>

Now in the HTML Direcotry we need to create our array.tpl file. To do this make a new HTML file and save it as array.tpl in the html directory.
In this file use the following code.

<h1>PHP Gurus</h1>
<div align="center"><table width="50%" height="50%>
  {section name=i loop=$gods}
      <tr>
        <td>{$gods[i]}</td>
     <tr>
  {/section}
</table></div>

Now we have this done Upload your script and test it.

You will notice the loop I created using smarty. This is basically a for each loop from PHP.

Now you know the basics of smartyPHP hope you enjoyed my tutorial and will stop including HTML in your PHP Scripts

any questions email me : affix@fedoraproject.org

[Jordan]

Excellent tutorial, +rep! I've been meaning to give Smarty a try.

[Affix]

Glad you like

[Brandon W]

Good work mate +rep

What PHP framework do you use most commonly?

[Affix]

I write my own frameworks usually

[Jordan]

Then is it really a framework?

[TkTech]

Then is it really a framework?

Certainly, over time people who work frequently in one language usually end up making their own.

Fedora Developer

Oh? Whats your focus as a Fedora Developer?

Nice tut.

[Affix]

Certainly, over time people who work frequently in one language usually end up making their own.



Oh? Whats your focus as a Fedora Developer?

Nice tut.

I do application and kernel development. Im working on my Own Distro atm

[Jordan]

Certainly, over time people who work frequently in one language usually end up making their own.

I disagree. Just because someone makes 3-4 classes and includes them in several projects, this does not constitute a framework. A framework is much more than the ability to do something - it also consists of a complete methodology.

[TkTech]

I do application and kernel development. Im working on my Own Distro atm

Ever hang around @ #osdev on freenode? I'm in there 24/7 if you stop by.

Jordan, I'll make a nice long post for you when I get home.