[UPHPU] Template systems

[Ken Snyder]

Jared Stevens wrote:
> Hey all -
> I'm sure this has been discussed before,  but I want to freshen the 
> debate. I've used Smarty for a while, but I've often wondered if there 
> is anything better out there in the world of PHP. I've briefly used a 
> library called Phastplate, but it seems like development isn't going 
> anymore on that. I can't find the homepage for it on the web either.
>
> The main thing I like about Smarty is its ability to do formating and 
> stuff on the fly, as well as the way it can handle arrays. Once I got 
> the scripting language down, it was really convenient. I also like how 
> you can use QuickForm together with Smarty and format forms and stuff.
>
I like both Smarty and plain PHP.  When working with a team of 
less-experienced coders, Smarty is often much better because it forces 
MVC.  I hate having to teach less-experienced coders that it is bad 
practice to be doing data processing and defining functions in a php 
template file.

I also like the namespacing of Smarty; that is anything inside the 
template won't conflict with other global php variables.  I liked it so 
much, in fact, that I wrote a QuickTemplater class that uses extract() 
to do the same thing for plain php templates. (see 
http://pastie.caboo.se/58630).

-- Ken Snyder