Thread: my own template engine

**saltedm8** · 24 May 2011 @ 08.11

Using a tutorial I have created my own template engine as follows

template.php

PHP Code:

 <?php 
class Digitalp{
     
     public $output;
     public $file;
     public $values = array();
     
     function __construct($file){
         $this->file = $file;
         $this->output = file_get_contents($this->file); 
         
     }
     
     function set($key, $value){
         $this->values[$key] = $value;
         }
         
     function output(){
         foreach($this->values as $key => $value){
             $tagsToReplace = "[$key]";
             $this->output = str_replace($tagsToReplace, $value, $this->output);
             }
             return $this->output;
         
         }
}
?>

index.php

PHP Code:

 <?php 
require("template.php");

$dig = new Digitalp('defult.tpl' , 'form.tpl');
$dig->set ('title','my site title');
$dig->set ('form', 'include(form.php)');

echo $dig->output();
?>

defult.tpl

HTML Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Untitled Document</title>
</head>
[title]
<hr />
[form]
<body>
</body>
</html>

I have a question,

as you can see in the index.php I am trying to call an external file and assign it the name 'form', this does not seem to work as obviously I want to position it where [form] is in the defult.php.. does anyone know how to make it work ?

thanks

**webape** · 24 May 2011 @ 10.13

You would need to write another function in your template.php

Something like the below after the set function:

Code:

 function set($key, $value){
         $this->values[$key] = $value;
         }
     function get_file($key, $file){
        ob_start();                    
        include($file);            
        $contents = ob_get_contents(); 
        ob_end_clean();  
        $this->values[$key] = $contents;              
           
      }

Then call the include as:

Code:

$dig->get_file('form', "form.php");

Hope this works?
Cheers, Matt

**janvt** · 24 May 2011 @ 10.49

no! no! no!

why can't form.php just contain a function which parses another template (containing the form HTML) and return this HTML?

form.php

PHP Code:

 function get_form_html() {
  // create form html
  return $html;
}

index.php

PHP Code:

 include('form.php');
$dig->set ('form', get_form_html());

**webape** · 24 May 2011 @ 11.01

I'm a little concerned about your no, no, no comment?

Nothing wrong with my solution and it is reusable - and answers the question as asked?
Not saying there is anything wrong with your solution.
Just wondering why you think there is something wrong with my solution?

**janvt** · 24 May 2011 @ 11.29

Sorry, should have explained....

Yes, it works, but it really is quite bad practice for a number of reasons:
- breaks the normal line of execution which makes the code very hard to debug.
- kills all chances of error handling.
- parameters would have to be global (you can't pass them normally).
- same with return parameters.
- code readability.

**saltedm8** · 24 May 2011 @ 11.39

Thank you that did it, my only issue now would be passing variables from the function to the template, so for example if I had something like

PHP Code:

 <?php function get_form_html() {
  $html = '<form action=$formsubmit method="get"><input name="" type="text" /><textarea name="" cols="" rows=""></textarea></form>';
     return $html;
}  
?>

it would pass the $forumsubmit over to default.php if $forumsubmit = myform.php for example

**janvt** · 24 May 2011 @ 12.05

if you're using a template engine, then why have any HTML in your PHP at all?

PHP Code:

 <?php function get_form_html($formsubmit) { // add parameters which you need from index.php
  $dig = new Digitalp('form.tpl');
  $dig->set ('formsubmit',$formsubmit); 
  return $dig->output();
}  
?>

form.tpl

Code:

<form action=[formsubmit] method="get"><input name="" type="text" /><textarea name="" cols="" rows=""></textarea></form>

**saltedm8** · 24 May 2011 @ 12.53

I dont know if you have ever messed with phpbb, but that forum software uses or used {COMMAND} as its templating system ( I was using phpbb2 years ago ) each {COMMAND} called individual parts of the site template elements, {CONTACT_FORM}, {IMAGE_GALLERY} , {LATEST_POSTS} etc etc, all call every piece of those elements that minimizes the amount of stuff you have to learn in order to create a custom forum template in that case, I am attempting the same only with a cms to make it simpler to create templates for it, replacing things like [content] and [twitter_link] etc all controlled from the admin panel, but hopefully making it also possible for users to be able to dynamically create custom [calls] for their templates too by defining html with pre-made [ commands ] to utilise the built in php of my cms ( like an email form ).