Smarty Anyone?

Not sure that’s such a good idea. WordPress has it’s own templating system, so you’d be effectively using a template engine to design a theme for a templating system, yes? OTT? ??

If you’re used to Smarty, WP should be a snip to use. Start with https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Theme_Development
and then bookmark https://codex.www.ads-software.com/index.php?title=Template_Tags

Well, I’ve developed some seriously complex modules for Postnuke (which uses a SMARTY theme engine) and WordPress themes look like Greek to me. I’m highly comfortable with PHP, HTML, and CSS but the engine used to build a WordPress is chaos at best compared to what a SMARTY driven theme would look like.

No Theme Developer should ever have to worry about PHP syntax. SMARTY takes care of that for them.

Looking at the example on the smarty site i’d say i’d disagree it’s any easier, you’d still have to learn a new syntax if you’re a non-coder…

To anyone who knows HTML and CSS, but not PHP this..
{foreach from=$data item="entry"}
[one snippet from the example on the smarty site]

makes no more sense then a PHP equivalent to a user not familiar with the syntax..

WordPress templates are written in CSS, HTML and PHP, there’s nothing more to it, other then calling a function here and there, but the syntax is the same as you’d use for regular PHP, no special syntax, unlike the smarty code..

I’m trying to look at this with a non-bias approach but having a hard time because i can write PHP, HTML and CSS and can’t see how Smarty could offer me anything that i can’t do already… you’ll have to sell me on it with something a bit more…

If you know HTML and CSS, you can write templates in WordPress just as easily as in Smarty (i’d be willing to argue easier), because there’s still additional syntax in the files that require understanding… whether that be PHP or Smarty code is apples for oranges… personally i think the syntax looks horrible and i’d rather stick with regular style PHP, not some special syntax.

Don’t let my comment be a turn off for anyone though, compare the difference between the two types.. (i’ll have to make imaginary equivalents for the PHP example)

Smarty:

{* Smarty *}

<form action="{$SCRIPT_NAME}?action=submit" method="post">
<table border="1">
    {if $error ne ""}
        <tr>
            <td bgcolor="yellow" colspan="2">
                {if $error eq "name_empty"}You must supply a name.
                {elseif $error eq "comment_empty"} You must supply a comment.
                {/if}
            </td>
        </tr>
    {/if}
    <tr>
        <td>Name:</td>
        <td><input type="text" name="Name" value="{$post.Name|escape}" size="40"></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td valign="top">Comment:</td>
        <td><textarea name="Comment" cols="40" rows="10">{$post.Comment|escape}</textarea></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td colspan="2" align="center"><input type="submit" value="Submit"></td>
    </tr>
</table>
</form>

PHP equivalent:

<?php get_header(); // If this page required the include for the header ?>
<form action="<?php bloginfo('url'); // Depends what you're doing ?>" method="post">
<table border="1">
<?php if($error) { ?>
        <tr>
            <td bgcolor="yellow" colspan="2">
                <?php echo $error; ?>
            </td>
        </tr>
   <?php } ?>
    <tr>
        <td>Name:</td>
        <td><input type="text" name="Name" value="<?php echo $somevar['name']; ?>" size="40"></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td valign="top">Comment:</td>
        <td><textarea name="Comment" cols="40" rows="10"><?php echo $somevar['comment']; ?></textarea></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td colspan="2" align="center"><input type="submit" value="Submit"></td>
    </tr>
</table>
</form>
<?php get_footer(); // If we're calling the header, then we likely want the footer to ?>

By all means if i’m missing something point it out, i just thought your point was the WP templating system is hard to use(or even in comparison), which could not be further from the truth (impo), i’ve used a a few CMS systems over the years, including PHPNuke (i know shocking), DragonflyCMS (formerly CPGNuke) and a few others, and none of them were as easy and friendly to use as the WordPress templating system..

p.s. Where’s my free smarties?… ?? … the thread title had me thinking of chocolate…

Hmmmm… how to explain.

If you haven’t used SMARTY before in any fashion, and WordPress is your current fave, then it would be hard to compare.

Suffice it to say… escaping to php with <?php etc can be brutal for someone who is a Web Developer versus a Web Programmer.

A template for an HTML page should NOT have code escapes, using SMARTY allows you to have JUST HTML on your page. Using the WordPress templating, you have to make sure you escaped your PHP correctly, is this an open tag or a close tag. And for newbies to Web Development, forget about it. My buddy has done several personal sites for his artwork in HTML but when he looked at the WordPress template layout he was lost. I feel that were SMARTY to be used, it wouldn’t be an issue. It’s intuitive. <p class=”{$QuoteStyle}”> is WHOLE lot easier than <p class=”<?php $_QuoteStyle ?>”>. First off, it’s cleaner. Secondly, it just intuitively “makes sense” to a non-programmer. It separates out the code from the style. Which is EXACTLY what the web is moving towards. (at least the forward thinking web apps)

It just makes more sense.

Sure, if you’ve USED WordPress for years, then what is there just makes sense. But having been with ONE CMS (Postnuke -> Zikula) since the late 90’s, and having seen WordPress-like Templating update to a separation of coding and styling with a plugin like SMARTY, it just makes life easier.

Of course, as all things on this planet, this is just an opinion. *shrugs*

I have discovered a walkthrough for integrating SMARTY, I’ll just be using that and shutting up for now. Should I stick with WordPress (doubtful after I’ve gotten my buddies site up) I might try to get an actual integrated plugin built and running. I’ve met a few people who started it and gave up due to what they called “the chaos of the code that is WordPress.”

*again shrugs*

Peace

Chaos, hmmm… i don’t know about that, the reason i came to WordPress was partly due to it’s ease of use..

If you’re use to the Smarty syntax, then naturally having to switch to PHP escapes would seem like chaos…

You can click on my profile link and see how long i’ve been using WordPress (since earlier this year), so i’m no expert, i’ve just picked it up fairly fast in that time (or at least i feel i’ve picked up quite alot).

{$QuoteStyle}

How is that no different then an escape sequence?… will smarty render that correctly if it were..

{$QuoteStyle

If not, then it’s no different then remembering..

<?php ?>

over..

{ }

You still ultimately end up with some enclosing characters for the commands, and you still have a set of them to remember, but obviously under a different syntax.

I’ll agree yes it looks less threatening and easier, but i’d still opt for recommending PHP because you can carry across PHP know-how to so many more places, more places then you’d be able to use Smarty.

Learning PHP would not only allow more control over your templates, but also give insight in how to write applications or scripts (and help you grasp ones you’re using already), learning Smarty just teachs you how to write Smarty, that’s only going to carry across to other “Smarty enabled apps”, and i’d guess that’s a far less number then apps that utilise PHP..

I’ll also agree it’s possibly an easier learning curve in some cases with Smarty, but like i said where can you carry that understanding along to utilise elsewhere when compared with PHP?..

I don’t think it’s possible to combine WordPress with Smarty: Smarty separates the business logic from the templating (which in some cases can be a good thing). The business logic is supposed to deliver vaiables (in PHP arrays) to the templating engine, which then is responsible for the layout.

WordPress functions however deliver (in many cases anyway) pure html elements (like li’s for menus), and pure html is covered in Smarty, not in the busness logic

That alone would require you to perform SQL statements from your wordpress installation, and then the need for wordpress would be reduced to nil.