RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
I can only talk about smarty but the designers can use as little or as much
of the features in the template. For example:
Typing {$app_version} in an ordinary html file could display "Greatest
Application version 3.3". If your programmer changes the value to "Greatest
Application version 4.0", the designer doesn't have to do anything. It would
show up automatically
This is a simple idea but what if you want to support multiple languages.
You tell your designer, use this tag for the welcome message {$welcome_user}
and if the user chooses english the message will come up like this "Welcome
Mark" and if the user chooses french then it will come up like this "Bonjour
Mark".
Smarty also has a bunch of tags like {html_select_date start_year=1998
end_year=2010} which would spit out a pulldown menu of all the months, a
pulldown menu of all the days, and a pulldown menu of all the years from
1998 to 2010.
You could create your own tags too like {display_all_users_online} and it
would spit out all the users online. Or you could create a tag like
{diplay_calender bg=blue text=black} and it would spit out a calender table
with a blue background and black text.
I'm sure those tags I showed you aren't hard to grasp, you can make it
harder with smarty cuz it has if/else and loop tags too but that's for more
advanced designers.
-Original Message-
From: Jesper Brunholm [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: June 27, 2002 7:40 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
John Holmes wrote:
> You really want a template system. Check out Smarty or patTemplate.
> Devshed.com has a nice two part tutorial on patTemplate and I like how
> it looks a little better than Smarty right now. Might want to evaluate
> both and see which is faster or easier.
Great idea - except that... when you've taught your designer to use the
template system you've ofte used about the amount of time it would take
to give him enough knowledge about php to go directly into the code the
way that Freeman suggested...
Regards
Jesper Brunholm
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Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
John Holmes wrote: > You really want a template system. Check out Smarty or patTemplate. > Devshed.com has a nice two part tutorial on patTemplate and I like how > it looks a little better than Smarty right now. Might want to evaluate > both and see which is faster or easier. Great idea - except that... when you've taught your designer to use the template system you've ofte used about the amount of time it would take to give him enough knowledge about php to go directly into the code the way that Freeman suggested... Regards Jesper Brunholm -- Phønix - Danish folk music from young musicians - http://www.phonixfolk.dk -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
Very cool John, you should forward that to pattemplate and they could see what to improve. One thing they could do is just implement caching like smarty templates does and you can't beat servering up static files. -Original Message- From: John Holmes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: June 27, 2002 12:39 AM To: 'SP'; 'Jean-Christian Imbeault'; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic > There are a ton of template systems. Look here for performance > benchmarks: > http://www.phpinsider.com/benchmarks_phemplate > > Unfortunately pattemplate isn't tested so I don't know how it rates. I downloaded the scripts and added patTemplate to the mix. It's average, rating in the middle on most tests... The big thing to notice is the last test, which runs through 100 loops on a test file. Smarty just blows everything out of the water. And think about what most of your web pages do...loop through result sets. If anyone wants the files, let me know. It's a simple unzip and run, everything is all packaged together. Results may vary on different servers; I'd like to see a *nix/Apache result set posted... Tested on Win2K / 1Ghz AMD / 512MB RAM / IIS 5.0 / PHP 4.2.1 (ISAPI Module), YRMV ---John Holmes... TEST 1.1 :: 20 registered vars :: 10 iterations name/ total time / average iteration time 100% smarty 4ms 0.0040654 103% phemplate 4ms 0.0041828 147% heyes class6ms 0.0059759 157% XTemplate 6ms 0.006363 160% phplib tpl 7ms 0.006502 256% bugi 10ms 0.0104083 290% patTemplate12ms 0.0117798 388% vTemplate 16ms 0.0157634 439% TemplatePower v2 18ms 0.0178361 1350% FastTemplate 55ms 0.0548866 TEST 1.2 :: 5 registered vars :: 10 iterations name / total time / average iteration time 100% heyes class3ms 0.0032871 106% phemplate 3ms 0.0034916 139% phplib tpl 5ms 0.0045691 148% smarty 5ms 0.0048685 160% XTemplate 5ms 0.0052609 257% FastTemplate 8ms 0.0084631 307% bugi 10ms 0.010094 332% patTemplate11ms 0.0109147 448% TemplatePower v2 15ms 0.0147268 502% vTemplate 16ms 0.0164906 TEST 1.3 :: 40 registered vars :: 5 iterations name / total time / average iteration time 100% phemplate 2ms 0.00453 141% smarty 3ms 0.0064098 159% XTemplate 4ms 0.0072178 178% phplib tpl 4ms 0.0080422 206% heyes class5ms 0.0093244 262% bugi 6ms 0.0118796 353% TemplatePower v2 8ms 0.015982 368% patTemplate8ms 0.0166856 401% vTemplate 9ms 0.0181768 1329% FastTemplate 30ms 0.0602032 TEST 2.1 :: text 10kb // loop 100 records // 10 iterations name / total time / average iteration time 100% smarty 6ms 0.0055744 379% phemplate 21ms 0.0211018 1039% bugi 58ms 0.0579146 1344% TemplatePower v2 75ms 0.0749261 1360% patTemplate 76ms 0.075819 3283% phplib tpl183ms 0.182 7096% XTemplate 396ms 0.3955393 8324% heyes class 464ms 0.4640006 -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
> There are a ton of template systems. Look here for performance > benchmarks: > http://www.phpinsider.com/benchmarks_phemplate > > Unfortunately pattemplate isn't tested so I don't know how it rates. I downloaded the scripts and added patTemplate to the mix. It's average, rating in the middle on most tests... The big thing to notice is the last test, which runs through 100 loops on a test file. Smarty just blows everything out of the water. And think about what most of your web pages do...loop through result sets. If anyone wants the files, let me know. It's a simple unzip and run, everything is all packaged together. Results may vary on different servers; I'd like to see a *nix/Apache result set posted... Tested on Win2K / 1Ghz AMD / 512MB RAM / IIS 5.0 / PHP 4.2.1 (ISAPI Module), YRMV ---John Holmes... TEST 1.1 :: 20 registered vars :: 10 iterations name/ total time / average iteration time 100% smarty 4ms 0.0040654 103% phemplate 4ms 0.0041828 147% heyes class6ms 0.0059759 157% XTemplate 6ms 0.006363 160% phplib tpl 7ms 0.006502 256% bugi 10ms 0.0104083 290% patTemplate12ms 0.0117798 388% vTemplate 16ms 0.0157634 439% TemplatePower v2 18ms 0.0178361 1350% FastTemplate 55ms 0.0548866 TEST 1.2 :: 5 registered vars :: 10 iterations name / total time / average iteration time 100% heyes class3ms 0.0032871 106% phemplate 3ms 0.0034916 139% phplib tpl 5ms 0.0045691 148% smarty 5ms 0.0048685 160% XTemplate 5ms 0.0052609 257% FastTemplate 8ms 0.0084631 307% bugi 10ms 0.010094 332% patTemplate11ms 0.0109147 448% TemplatePower v2 15ms 0.0147268 502% vTemplate 16ms 0.0164906 TEST 1.3 :: 40 registered vars :: 5 iterations name / total time / average iteration time 100% phemplate 2ms 0.00453 141% smarty 3ms 0.0064098 159% XTemplate 4ms 0.0072178 178% phplib tpl 4ms 0.0080422 206% heyes class5ms 0.0093244 262% bugi 6ms 0.0118796 353% TemplatePower v2 8ms 0.015982 368% patTemplate8ms 0.0166856 401% vTemplate 9ms 0.0181768 1329% FastTemplate 30ms 0.0602032 TEST 2.1 :: text 10kb // loop 100 records // 10 iterations name / total time / average iteration time 100% smarty 6ms 0.0055744 379% phemplate 21ms 0.0211018 1039% bugi 58ms 0.0579146 1344% TemplatePower v2 75ms 0.0749261 1360% patTemplate 76ms 0.075819 3283% phplib tpl183ms 0.182 7096% XTemplate 396ms 0.3955393 8324% heyes class 464ms 0.4640006 -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
on 26/06/02 11:53 PM, Mark Gallagher ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Theoretically this could still be done only with editing of the > stylesheet. Of course, it's not that simple - Mozilla comes closest to > decent browser support for that sort of radical change, and even it's > not there yet. well, theories don't work for me or my clients just yet :) i need proven methods. > Actually, I think the idea behind what the previous poster was saying is > that: > a) with stylesheets they don't need to touch the HTML once they've > finished with it (and handed it over to you for PHP work) > b) you therefore won't need templates I'm not convinced that: a) the increased development time is worth the theoretical benefits b) the lack of a boss, team leader or controller is such a good idea c) EVERYTHING can be achieved The idea that the designer and the programmer aren't even talking to each other worries me... if the designer adds a HR class that he thinks is a good idea, it may completely screw with everything else I've done. Nuh-uh. Designers should make recommendations to programmers in this case, and the programmer should make certain variables / configuration options available to the designer 24/7 for tweaking. Furthermore, the idea of a style sheet replacing ALL design further down the page is in fact a form of template. Except with this template, everyone has their fingers in the pie, which can't be a perfect solution. To achieve this "no rules, designer can do what they want" methodology would, IMO, lead to endless hours of development time, and then endless hours of bug fixes and tracing down problems. By inserting a few rules ( like "you only have a choice of 2 or 3 columns, not 1, not 4+") will make the development time shorter, lead to less conflict, etc etc. I'm not saying "don't use style sheets" -- because I do on every project! I'm saying "don't give the style sheet to the designer" -- give them a config file at best, or access to a small style sheet of things they NEED. IMO of course :) Justin French -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
On 25 Jun 2002 at 17:40, Jean-Christian Imbeault wrote: > Some of the "issues" are things like how to make it painless for both > the designers and me if one day, out of the blue, a designers decides > that the background colour should be changed, or the graphics changed. > Or even worse the two column layout should be a three column layout. > > But to start off with simple things like: > > Designer: > - on this page a dynamic table will be generated according to the > search > criteria entered by the user > - lines will have alternating colours > > I can code this easily, but what if the designer then decides that he > wants each *third* line to alternate colour, or he wants to use three > colours instead of two (a pattern 1,2,3,1,2,3 instead of 1,2,1,2). > > How can I make it so that he can do these changes without coming to > see me to change the code that outputs the data used in the table? > > Simple things like that ;) There was a recent thread on the mod_perl list related to this concept: MVC. http://st-www.cs.uiuc.edu/users/smarch/st-docs/mvc.html I have an image gallery app in Perl. There are controllers (cgi, mod_perl handler, script) which call functions in the "models" which simply or not perform functions and return data in hashes and arrays and arrays of hashes of arrays ... :) then the controller calls the viewer it wants to use (works with HTML::Template or Template::Toolkit) and sends the results back to the client making the request (and depeneding on that client, one or other view would be used). I rebelled when my boss wanted me to write an app for a handheld ... oh sure ... I'll just cut and paste and ... what a mess you will get into. You can see that here: http://www.memphisart.com/gallery/ I am in the process of applying some themes from this site: http://www.oswd.org/ Takes about 10 minutes to 1 hour depending on how the theme is written. The same concepts apply to PHP. I have 2 php sites and I've kind of tried to avoide a mishmash of html and PHP code all over the place. I used the concept of the Wrapper from Template::Toolkit for with a port of HTML::Template to PHP here: http://www.coremodules.com/ http://www.coremodules.com/talent/index.php A page calls which wrapper it wants to use. So in the case of talent it uses a one table body whereas most other pages use the 3 column wrapper. The pages simply gather the content ... the design of the page (for the site as a whole therefore) is done in one location. BUT, BUT ... now that I've seen this site: http://www.interakt.ro/products/Krysalis/ I'm going to try and scrap my PHP hack above and use the above. I was never able to use cocoon because I always use virtual hosts. If I can get the above to work on my PHP sites then I might use PHP a lot more. I have a good Perl system but I've only played with PHP for now. Anyone can write the spagetti code which is 90% of what I see in PHP. Most Perl programmers I know write their own template system ... just a common sense sort of thing and usually it starts from ignorance of a good existing templating system ... I've worked at a few different companies and I much prefer to find code that follows a standard than code that follows the whims of the programmer who happened to string it all together. Oh one more thing. The best projects I've worked on have an "html guy". This guy is in between a programmer and a designer. We get the designer to do their stuff in photoshop or similar and the html guy converts that into the screen shots we need with our data model and template tags. Of course most companies think they can get those 2 and someone to answer the phone all in one package for double minimum wage ... oh well ... If your designers use GUIs and think they know what they are doing ... well I don't know. Maybe M$ has a solution that works for that environment. Peter -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
> >>Wouldn't you ultimately be better off moving most of this sort of > > thing > >>into style sheets and then have the designers play with the style > > sheets instead? > > What if your designer wants to change from a two column > table to a four column table. Or change the menu from a vertical column on > the left to a horizontal row on the bottom that's run by images instead of text. > Actually, I think the idea behind what the previous poster > was saying is that: > a) with stylesheets they don't need to touch the HTML once they've > finished with it (and handed it over to you for PHP work) > b) you therefore won't need templates Mostly my original comment above was in relation to someone's response where they said they had defined a whole stack of variables for each file (eg. $fontMain, $fontCopyright and so on) and my point was specifically in relation to that. Certainly, for layout and other aspects a style sheet is not the whole solution but when it comes to display elements such as fonts and colours I'd have to say that it _IS_ the solution. CYA, Dave -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
On Wednesday, June 26, 2002, at 09:05 AM, John Holmes wrote: > I disagree. Maybe I'm just not getting it, or understanding the "FULL > POWER" of xml/xslt. It just seems like it's adding in an additional > layer that you don't need. It seems so dependent on browser versions, > and parser versions, etc. Just make a plain HTML template and a small > template parsing script to insert the variables you need. Pattemplate is > pretty close to XSL, but I haven't seen any speed comparisons on it. Yeah, but what if you want to output to a format other than HTML? For instance you want to generate a PDF invoice, which is emailed to the user, but you also want to display that invoice to the user? Should you have two separate files/sources of data? You could have one XML file, and use XSL to make an HTML document which appears in the user's browser and a PDF which is emailed to them. The point of XML is to look beyond the web browser as a point where the user needs data. PDAs would benefit from non-HTML formatted stuff (too small a screen for most web pages), cell phones have their hardly-used WML, there are tons of different print formats like PDF or PostScript, plus alternative formats like troff (for man pages) and POD (for Perl manpages) and others. XSLT lets you output from one source file to any desired format. If you need versatility in the output of your data, XML can really help you. Plus, it doesn't depend on browser version if that's what you're worried about -- it can be done server-side: use PHP to perform the transformation before it gets to the user if it's going to their browser. That's why some XML-based sites let you choose whether to view the page in HTML or XML (so that if you want to use a spider or script to parse the data on the web page instead of looking at it in a browser, you can do that much more easily with the XML formatted output than the HTML formatted output). Later on down the road, when (hopefully) all browsers incorporate an XSLT processor, the burden of performing the transformation can be handled by the client. Not that client-side technology has been very successful at standardizing, in consideration of different JavaScript implementations, CSS implementations, and even Java Virtual Machines (witness Microsoft consistently refuse to ship a decent JVM with their OS, even though they are freely available from the Sun web site). That's why server side stuff like PHP will probably always be invaluable. Erik Erik Price Web Developer Temp Media Lab, H.H. Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
John Holmes wrote: >>Wouldn't you ultimately be better off moving most of this sort of > > thing > >>into style sheets and then have the designers play with the style > > sheets > >>instead? > > Sure, if all they are doing is playing with fonts, colors, sizes, etc... > > What if your designer wants to change from a two column table to a four > column table. Or change the menu from a vertical column on the left to a > horizontal row on the bottom that's run by images instead of text. Theoretically this could still be done only with editing of the stylesheet. Of course, it's not that simple - Mozilla comes closest to decent browser support for that sort of radical change, and even it's not there yet. > Do you trust your designer to do all that and not mess up any of your > PHP code that's thrown in with the HTML? That's why you use templates... Actually, I think the idea behind what the previous poster was saying is that: a) with stylesheets they don't need to touch the HTML once they've finished with it (and handed it over to you for PHP work) b) you therefore won't need templates -- Mark Gallagher http://cyberfuddle.com/infinitebabble/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
> Wouldn't you ultimately be better off moving most of this sort of thing > into style sheets and then have the designers play with the style sheets > instead? Sure, if all they are doing is playing with fonts, colors, sizes, etc... What if your designer wants to change from a two column table to a four column table. Or change the menu from a vertical column on the left to a horizontal row on the bottom that's run by images instead of text. Do you trust your designer to do all that and not mess up any of your PHP code that's thrown in with the HTML? That's why you use templates... ---John Holmes... -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
> personnaly, I agree with you, and I would really like to see more PHP > frameworks (or template systems) rely on XML/XSLT. > you can have a look at : > http://www.interakt.ro/products/Krysalis/ I disagree. Maybe I'm just not getting it, or understanding the "FULL POWER" of xml/xslt. It just seems like it's adding in an additional layer that you don't need. It seems so dependent on browser versions, and parser versions, etc. Just make a plain HTML template and a small template parsing script to insert the variables you need. Pattemplate is pretty close to XSL, but I haven't seen any speed comparisons on it. ---John Holmes... -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
> > $siteTitle > > $colBg = "#FF"; > $colText = "#FFCC99"; > $colLink = "#EE"; > $colComplimentary = "#CC6600"; > > > $fontHeading = " size=\"3\">"; Wouldn't you ultimately be better off moving most of this sort of thing into style sheets and then have the designers play with the style sheets instead? What I tend to do is define style classes for various functional areas in my web sites and then my designer can figure out the design aspects based on those constraints. When you get down to it style sheets help you to stay consistent in your layouts - after all, you do want all your body text to be the same don't you? So if you define a bodytext class and then code that into your back-end it is always going to be that way. If the designer then decides that they want Times New Roman instead of Comic Sans as the body font they can change it in the style sheet and everything else changes accordingly. CYA, Dave -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
personnaly, I agree with you, and I would really like to see more PHP
frameworks (or template systems) rely on XML/XSLT.
you can have a look at :
http://www.interakt.ro/products/Krysalis/
it's a sort of rewrite of cocoon in PHP ...
I had a look to the code, but never used it yet on a real project.
looks interesting ...
> -Original Message-
> From: Jerome Houston [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: mardi 25 juin 2002 20:51
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
>
>
> Is there a particular reason everyone is skipping over the idea of using
> XML/XSLT? What you're talking about is EXACTLY what XSLT was
> designed for.
> You can write scripts that access the DB, and output XML. Then
> you just use
> XSL files written by your designers to translate your XML into
> HTML. they
> get to choose EVERYTHING about what the page looks like.
>
> Granted, your designers need to learn a little XSL, but it sounds
> like, for
> what you're doing, they wouldn't need to learn much. If you're going to
> teach them to use something proprietary like pattemplate (as mentioned
> below), why not spend that time teaching them to use XSL, which
> is easy to
> use and isn't proprietary, it's actually W3 specified.
>
> for info on how to get it working with php, go to:
> http://www.webmasterbase.com/article/602
>
> some people may disagree.
>
> -jerome
>
> >Basically, like someone else said, you teach your HTML
> >designers to use custom tags that your template engine will recognize
> >and place the correct values for.
> >
> >To make a loop, you'd tell your designers to do something like this
> >
> >
> >{filename}
> >
> >
> >It's not exactly like that, mind you, but you get the idea.
> >
> >You can't ever completely separate you designers and programmers. What
> >you do is provide an easy to understand way for your designers to
> >include the programming elements. What's easier, teaching them to put
> > or {name} in the document???
>
>
> _
> MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
> http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
>
>
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RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
Is there a particular reason everyone is skipping over the idea of using
XML/XSLT? What you're talking about is EXACTLY what XSLT was designed for.
You can write scripts that access the DB, and output XML. Then you just use
XSL files written by your designers to translate your XML into HTML. they
get to choose EVERYTHING about what the page looks like.
Granted, your designers need to learn a little XSL, but it sounds like, for
what you're doing, they wouldn't need to learn much. If you're going to
teach them to use something proprietary like pattemplate (as mentioned
below), why not spend that time teaching them to use XSL, which is easy to
use and isn't proprietary, it's actually W3 specified.
for info on how to get it working with php, go to:
http://www.webmasterbase.com/article/602
some people may disagree.
-jerome
>Basically, like someone else said, you teach your HTML
>designers to use custom tags that your template engine will recognize
>and place the correct values for.
>
>To make a loop, you'd tell your designers to do something like this
>
>
>{filename}
>
>
>It's not exactly like that, mind you, but you get the idea.
>
>You can't ever completely separate you designers and programmers. What
>you do is provide an easy to understand way for your designers to
>include the programming elements. What's easier, teaching them to put
> or {name} in the document???
_
MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
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RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
There are a ton of template systems. Look here for performance benchmarks:
http://www.phpinsider.com/benchmarks_phemplate
Unfortunately pattemplate isn't tested so I don't know how it rates.
-Original Message-
From: John Holmes [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: June 25, 2002 12:02 PM
To: 'Jean-Christian Imbeault'; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
You really want a template system. Check out Smarty or patTemplate.
Devshed.com has a nice two part tutorial on patTemplate and I like how
it looks a little better than Smarty right now. Might want to evaluate
both and see which is faster or easier.
I was going to give an example of patTemplate, but the devshed page
isn't coming up. Basically, like someone else said, you teach your HTML
designers to use custom tags that your template engine will recognize
and place the correct values for.
To make a loop, you'd tell your designers to do something like this
{filename}
It's not exactly like that, mind you, but you get the idea.
You can't ever completely separate you designers and programmers. What
you do is provide an easy to understand way for your designers to
include the programming elements. What's easier, teaching them to put
or {name} in the document???
---John Holmes...
> -Original Message-
> From: Jean-Christian Imbeault [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 3:50 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
>
> Thanks for the links. Hard to figure out what those things are just
from
> their web pages. They should work on making it easier to figure what
the
> projects are.
>
> I'll have a look but ...
>
> Maybe my message was too vague but what I meant is that my designers
> will come up with the site layout, colours, graphics etc ... I want
them
> to be able to do all their work without thinking about any
programming.
>
> If they want to make a page that lists in a table all the documents we
> have from 1999-2001, then they can can do this easily without worrying
> about me.
>
> And just as importantly I can code the scripts that will generate the
> table without worrying that maybe in the future the layout will
change.
>
> So I how can I do this? i.e. if the designers want to change the
> background colour on one page how can they do this without coming to
seem?
>
> Jc
>
>
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RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
You really want a template system. Check out Smarty or patTemplate.
Devshed.com has a nice two part tutorial on patTemplate and I like how
it looks a little better than Smarty right now. Might want to evaluate
both and see which is faster or easier.
I was going to give an example of patTemplate, but the devshed page
isn't coming up. Basically, like someone else said, you teach your HTML
designers to use custom tags that your template engine will recognize
and place the correct values for.
To make a loop, you'd tell your designers to do something like this
{filename}
It's not exactly like that, mind you, but you get the idea.
You can't ever completely separate you designers and programmers. What
you do is provide an easy to understand way for your designers to
include the programming elements. What's easier, teaching them to put
or {name} in the document???
---John Holmes...
> -Original Message-
> From: Jean-Christian Imbeault [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 25, 2002 3:50 AM
> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
>
> Thanks for the links. Hard to figure out what those things are just
from
> their web pages. They should work on making it easier to figure what
the
> projects are.
>
> I'll have a look but ...
>
> Maybe my message was too vague but what I meant is that my designers
> will come up with the site layout, colours, graphics etc ... I want
them
> to be able to do all their work without thinking about any
programming.
>
> If they want to make a page that lists in a table all the documents we
> have from 1999-2001, then they can can do this easily without worrying
> about me.
>
> And just as importantly I can code the scripts that will generate the
> table without worrying that maybe in the future the layout will
change.
>
> So I how can I do this? i.e. if the designers want to change the
> background colour on one page how can they do this without coming to
seem?
>
> Jc
>
>
> --
> PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/)
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
--
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RE: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
I recommend http://smarty.php.net for seperating presentation from logic.
It's one of the best template systems currently. It worked out of the box
for me but it took me like the long weekend to figure out some of the config
folders. It does your standard variable substitution {$bgcolor} but what I
like about it is that it lets you code your own custom tags for your
designers like {display_calender} so it hides all the php code for
displaying a calender or something. Your designer just types in
{display_calender} in the html files and it comes out a calender everytime.
-Original Message-
From: Jean-Christian Imbeault [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: June 25, 2002 1:00 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
I'm just about to start a large PHP project in which I get to work with
professional designers/layout people. I want to separate all the
programming logic from the presentation but I am not sure how to do this.
Can anyone point me to resources (web tutorials/articles or books) that
would help me figure out how best to separate my programming work from
designer's work and how best to integrate them?
Sorry for asking such a generic question but I don't know how to best
phrase it. I did look on the web but the best I could find were some
mentions of templates. While templates seems ok they don't address all
the issues of separation presentation from code (if I understand them
correctly).
Thanks!
Jc
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Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
on 25/06/02 6:40 PM, Jean-Christian Imbeault ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Some of the "issues" are things like how to make it painless for both > the designers and me if one day, out of the blue, a designers decides > that the background colour should be changed, or the graphics changed. > Or even worse the two column layout should be a three column layout. well, some things are easy (see my other posts about colours) and some things are hard (2 col layout changing to 3), although not impossible. decide on a allowed set of changes the design team can make/have access to, and stick to it... anything else will require more code, and more time. > But to start off with simple things like: > > Designer: > - on this page a dynamic table will be generated according to the search > criteria entered by the user > - lines will have alternating colours > > I can code this easily, but what if the designer then decides that he > wants each *third* line to alternate colour, or he wants to use three > colours instead of two (a pattern 1,2,3,1,2,3 instead of 1,2,1,2). > > How can I make it so that he can do these changes without coming to see > me to change the code that outputs the data used in the table? Well, then you work on a set of code that allows for configuration of the table to alternate in 2 or 3 colours (1st rule established -- not < 2, not > 3), and then allow them to set the 2 or 3 values via a colour configuration file (see other posts) which is included at the top of the page. Proving them ACCESS to these configuration values can be as simple as allowing them to write/change the config.php file, or it might involve a content management system with a GUI web based control panel. Generally the config aren't hard, it's executing them in a function wrapper / code block. Establish rules, design config variables to accomodate the options, allow access to these config variables (a flat file, mysql values, whatever), then accomodate these config options in code. Yes, providing code that allows for 2 OR 3 alternating color rows in a table will be a lot more than for just 2, so you need to establish if this is a priority. Justin French -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
on 25/06/02 5:50 PM, Jean-Christian Imbeault ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > Maybe my message was too vague but what I meant is that my designers > will come up with the site layout, colours, graphics etc ... I want them > to be able to do all their work without thinking about any programming. Why can't you specify them to make comments to , or better still specify which file to include with ?? > If they want to make a page that lists in a table all the documents we > have from 1999-2001, then they can can do this easily without worrying > about me. Yes, but things like sessions, form validation, etc will require more indepth scripts, possibly with thing in the headers, and much more conditional style pages with lots of if()'s. > And just as importantly I can code the scripts that will generate the > table without worrying that maybe in the future the layout will change. ask them to write an include statement at the point where your table needs to appear. > So I how can I do this? i.e. if the designers want to change the > background colour on one page how can they do this without coming to seem? See my other post on this topic... have a set of predefined variables which both you and they have access to, and include this set of vars on every page... these can be for the colour pallet, font tags, and all sorts of other stuff which can be changed centrally (once) by modifying the config file, affecting all templated pages. You need to sit down and figure out what you want to give them access to, and try to define these as variables. "; $fontBody = ""; $fontCopyright = ""; ?> The calling in HTML code might be: My Heading The main body text Copyright me 2002 They can change the config file as many times as they want! Justin French -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
Thanks! I'll visit and read all the links you gave. Some of the "issues" are things like how to make it painless for both the designers and me if one day, out of the blue, a designers decides that the background colour should be changed, or the graphics changed. Or even worse the two column layout should be a three column layout. But to start off with simple things like: Designer: - on this page a dynamic table will be generated according to the search criteria entered by the user - lines will have alternating colours I can code this easily, but what if the designer then decides that he wants each *third* line to alternate colour, or he wants to use three colours instead of two (a pattern 1,2,3,1,2,3 instead of 1,2,1,2). How can I make it so that he can do these changes without coming to see me to change the code that outputs the data used in the table? Simple things like that ;) Jc Justin French wrote: > I think the issues are VERY project specific. Luckily for me I'm the > DESIGNER and PROGRAMMER on many of my projects, but often I'm just one of > the two. > > When I'm just designing, I obviously need to develop page templates, but > more and more of my time is spent developing style guides (often also called > VM's (visual manifestos), among others). > > Basically, if a Style Guide is done right, programmers can make a whole heap > of design-related decisions as they go. This can be in the form of colour > guides, type styles, heading treatment, image treatment, spacing, layout > styles, form presentation, etc etc. > > If the programmer reads and understands the rules, then a LOT of back and > forth can be saved. > > > Commonly a site may have: > > -- > | common header | > -- > || > | dynamic middle section | > || > || > -- > | common footer | > -- > > > What you want to do is have the designer "design" the header and footer, and > provide style guides and samples of what might happen in the middle. > > > From there, it depends on how far you want to separate the code and content. > > Simple things like: > > - defining $col1 $col2 $col3 colours which can be changed for a different > pallet at any time > - defining font tags like $fontBig $fontHeading $fontCopyright which can be > changed site-wide at any time > > Slightly more complex things like a webbox/fusebox architecture > (http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/bill19990831.php3), or even just > separating the TEXT of the pages out into separate plain text files or into > a database will be a major help. > > Also check out http://bombusbee.com & http://www.fusebox.org in relation to > fuseboxes. > > Then talk about CSS -- the whole aim of CSS is to separate content from > design/mark-up. There's a pretty good article on SitePoint > (http://www.WebmasterBase.com/article/379) which brushes the surface. > > > There's about another 5 or six articles on this page worth reading: > http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/ > > And I'd recommend spending a LOT of time at http://SitePoint.com > (http://www.WebmasterBase.com). > > > > > I think you need to define the "issues" you mention, and them we can all > help with some solutions :) > > > > on 25/06/02 3:00 PM, Jean-Christian Imbeault ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > wrote: > > >>I'm just about to start a large PHP project in which I get to work with >>professional designers/layout people. I want to separate all the >>programming logic from the presentation but I am not sure how to do this. >> >>Can anyone point me to resources (web tutorials/articles or books) that >>would help me figure out how best to separate my programming work from >>designer's work and how best to integrate them? >> >>Sorry for asking such a generic question but I don't know how to best >>phrase it. I did look on the web but the best I could find were some >>mentions of templates. While templates seems ok they don't address all >>the issues of separation presentation from code (if I understand them >>correctly). >> >>Thanks! >> >>Jc >> >> > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
I think the issues are VERY project specific. Luckily for me I'm the DESIGNER and PROGRAMMER on many of my projects, but often I'm just one of the two. When I'm just designing, I obviously need to develop page templates, but more and more of my time is spent developing style guides (often also called VM's (visual manifestos), among others). Basically, if a Style Guide is done right, programmers can make a whole heap of design-related decisions as they go. This can be in the form of colour guides, type styles, heading treatment, image treatment, spacing, layout styles, form presentation, etc etc. If the programmer reads and understands the rules, then a LOT of back and forth can be saved. Commonly a site may have: -- | common header | -- || | dynamic middle section | || || -- | common footer | -- What you want to do is have the designer "design" the header and footer, and provide style guides and samples of what might happen in the middle. >From there, it depends on how far you want to separate the code and content. Simple things like: - defining $col1 $col2 $col3 colours which can be changed for a different pallet at any time - defining font tags like $fontBig $fontHeading $fontCopyright which can be changed site-wide at any time Slightly more complex things like a webbox/fusebox architecture (http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/bill19990831.php3), or even just separating the TEXT of the pages out into separate plain text files or into a database will be a major help. Also check out http://bombusbee.com & http://www.fusebox.org in relation to fuseboxes. Then talk about CSS -- the whole aim of CSS is to separate content from design/mark-up. There's a pretty good article on SitePoint (http://www.WebmasterBase.com/article/379) which brushes the surface. There's about another 5 or six articles on this page worth reading: http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/ And I'd recommend spending a LOT of time at http://SitePoint.com (http://www.WebmasterBase.com). I think you need to define the "issues" you mention, and them we can all help with some solutions :) on 25/06/02 3:00 PM, Jean-Christian Imbeault ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) wrote: > I'm just about to start a large PHP project in which I get to work with > professional designers/layout people. I want to separate all the > programming logic from the presentation but I am not sure how to do this. > > Can anyone point me to resources (web tutorials/articles or books) that > would help me figure out how best to separate my programming work from > designer's work and how best to integrate them? > > Sorry for asking such a generic question but I don't know how to best > phrase it. I did look on the web but the best I could find were some > mentions of templates. While templates seems ok they don't address all > the issues of separation presentation from code (if I understand them > correctly). > > Thanks! > > Jc > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
Well... I still think that these tools can help. For example PHPWebSite (which I use for our Intranet) has a set of 'themes'. A theme consists of a style sheet (.css), some image files (logo's, backgrounds etc.) and a small set of PHP scripts that define things like standard header, footers. If you would like to change the look and feel, you 'just' have to change (or add) the theme plugin. Examples are also on the phpwebsite homepage. You can even allow visitors to select a different theme when they visit the website. Now it depends on how much your designers know about style sheets etc. Would you trust them changing a style sheet and some images? If not than your project could very well be that you have to write a 'theme editor'. A kind of user interface that designers can use to build the theme files. But anyway 'content mangers' (phpwebsite / phpnuke) do seperate the application from the contents, but also application from design. Allthough the later not as far as I suppose you would need for your project. good luck René p.s. these tools require a database on the webserver as well, so if you download phpwebsite or phpnuke, be prepared to also have a database installed on your webserver. Jean-Christian Imbeault wrote: > Thanks for the links. Hard to figure out what those things are just > from their web pages. They should work on making it easier to figure > what the projects are. > > I'll have a look but ... > > Maybe my message was too vague but what I meant is that my designers > will come up with the site layout, colours, graphics etc ... I want > them to be able to do all their work without thinking about any > programming. > > If they want to make a page that lists in a table all the documents we > have from 1999-2001, then they can can do this easily without worrying > about me. > > And just as importantly I can code the scripts that will generate the > table without worrying that maybe in the future the layout will change. > > So I how can I do this? i.e. if the designers want to change the > background colour on one page how can they do this without coming to > seem? > > Jc > > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
Thanks for the links. Hard to figure out what those things are just from their web pages. They should work on making it easier to figure what the projects are. I'll have a look but ... Maybe my message was too vague but what I meant is that my designers will come up with the site layout, colours, graphics etc ... I want them to be able to do all their work without thinking about any programming. If they want to make a page that lists in a table all the documents we have from 1999-2001, then they can can do this easily without worrying about me. And just as importantly I can code the scripts that will generate the table without worrying that maybe in the future the layout will change. So I how can I do this? i.e. if the designers want to change the background colour on one page how can they do this without coming to seem? Jc -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
Re: [PHP] Seperating presentation from logic
You might want to start by looking (download, instal, try) at available content managers like PHPWebSite http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/ PHPNukehttp://phpnuke.org/ They do exactly that; seperate content from programming logic. As an admin you can assign certain users as beining authors. Authors can upload contents to the web-server without every having to know anything about PHP, webservers or databases. As an admin you can change the look and feel of the webpage without having to know much about PHP. It's designing a new 'skin' rather than desiging a complete new PHP project. It might very well be that these content managers do not fit your needs, but if you start from scratch they are certainly worth looking into before you take off on a large PHP project. good luck René Jean-Christian Imbeault wrote: > I'm just about to start a large PHP project in which I get to work > with professional designers/layout people. I want to separate all the > programming logic from the presentation but I am not sure how to do this. > > Can anyone point me to resources (web tutorials/articles or books) > that would help me figure out how best to separate my programming work > from designer's work and how best to integrate them? > > Sorry for asking such a generic question but I don't know how to best > phrase it. I did look on the web but the best I could find were some > mentions of templates. While templates seems ok they don't address all > the issues of separation presentation from code (if I understand them > correctly). > > Thanks! > > Jc > > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
