How does SMARTY make things easier to read?
How is…
{$name}
…any easier than…
<?$name?>
…?
I think using SMARTY is a lot more complicated approach. You have to
learn an entirely new language/syntax and then try to keep things
straight switching back and forth between the two.
That's a valid example, but it's also the most basic possible
functionality of Smarty -- outputting a straight var. I really can't sit
here and describe how it's more readable... as the Smarty site says
"Some things can't be explained, but only experienced." But when you
have thousand-line HTML pages absolutely littered with PHP formatting
code and loops and conditionals, you can really appreciate the
difference templating makes, even if the majority of your logic is
already separated out. Which is more readable:
// What do I belong to? How am I indented legibly among the sea of PHP
// tags?
<?php } ?>
OR...
{/if}
// Grabbed from Google; the year choices aren't even dynamic.
<select name="day"><?php
for ($i = 1; $i <= 31; $i++) {
echo "<option value=\"$i\">$i</option>\n";
}
?></select>
<select name="month"><?php
for ($i = 1; $i <= 12; $i++) {
$monthname = date(‘F‘, mktime(12, 0, 0, $i, 1,
2005));
echo "<option value=\"$i\">$monthname</option>";
}
?></select>
<select name="year"><?php
for ($i = 2005; $i <= 2010; $i++) {
echo "<option value=\"$i\">$i</option>";
}
?></select>
OR...
{html_select_date time="$begDate" prefix="begDate" start_year="2001"
end_year="+1"}
Now look at the examples again and imagine you're a front-end developer
or a designer.
Can you create your own templating system and just do this all yourself?
Of course, but then you have to keep it updated and maintained yourself,
you have to teach it to your colleagues, and if you want to implement
some of the nicer functionality you'll want to do the caching and
security features Smarty already has. I've never been a big fan of
reinventing the wheel. I'd rather spend my time actually coding the
application rather than working on my templating system.
That said, there are many cases where it's perfectly appropriate to roll
your own templating system. Smarty is pretty low-level for systems where
the templates can be modified by users. Movable Type has its own
templating. Gallery 2 uses Smarty, and I think they should have written
their own. Also, while Smarty is empirically fast and stable and all
that, it's still a dependency. As with any other tool, you have to
decide what tradeoffs you're willing to make.
I totally understand your argument about learning another syntax on top
of PHP, because I made the exact same argument when I was first
introduced to Smarty. I ended up being forced to learn it for work and
obviously ended up liking it quite a bit (FWIW). There are really only
about 5 functions/statements that are really common, and they are based
on PHP syntax, so it really only takes about 30 minutes to get started.
Just to be clear, I am NOT saying everyone should use Smarty, that it's
ideal for every project or even MOST projects, or that it doesn't have
any flaws. It's a good tool, it has some good applications, and a lot of
people find it useful. That's all.
References:
http://smarty.php.net/whyuse.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Invented_Here
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