[UPHPU] Pastebin.org, Would Anybody like to help me create a pastebin?

[Jennifer Charrey]

> 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