A preliminary study on the template engine Smarty in PHP

Nowadays, website development is inseparable from an important component-template engine. A template engine refers to a tool that combines page templates and data to generate HTML code with a specific format. In various website development frameworks, the template engine is an essential component, because the template engine can greatly reduce the duplication of code and improve the dynamics of the page. One of the most common and popular template engines is Smarty.

Smarty is a DSL (Domain Specific Language) template engine developed based on the PHP language. It is a substitute for the native PHP template engine. Smarty has features such as template caching, variable adjustment, cross-site scripting protection and extended syntax, and is widely used in website development. Smarty is an open source template engine, so you are free to use it anywhere. Smarty can be used not only in PHP web design, but also in other environments.

Why choose Smarty template engine?

1. Template Cache

Smarty saves compiled template files through caching, thereby speeding up the processing of template files. Smarty will automatically check whether the template file has been updated. If the template file changes, it will regenerate the compiled template file.

2. Variable Adjustment

Smarty allows developers to use variable adjusters to handle the data type and format of variables. For example, in a template file, you can use {$var|upper} to convert all characters in the variable $var to uppercase characters. Smarty also provides hundreds of variable regulators to meet your various needs.

3. Cross-site scripting protection

Smarty has cross-site scripting protection (XSS Protection) turned on by default, which can automatically convert static content into HTML format to prevent malicious attacks.

4. Extended syntax

Smarty supports extended syntax, and various tags and functions can be customized to meet your specific needs.

Basic usage of Smarty

1. Installing Smarty

First you need to download Smarty locally, and then unzip it to your web directory.

2. Create template files and compile files

First you need to create a template file, the file name usually ends with .tpl. At the same time, Smarty also needs a directory to save compiled files. This directory needs to be set to the templates_c directory under the Smarty directory. Stored in this directory are compiled template files.

3. Creating Smarty objects

First, you need to load the Smarty class library in your PHP code.

require_once('Smarty.class.php');

Then, you need to create a Smarty object and set various parameters and options of Smarty.

$smarty = new Smarty(); $smarty->template_dir = '/path/to/templates'; $smarty->compile_dir = '/path/to/compile'; $smarty->cache_dir = '/path/to/cache';

4. Assign variables and display of template files

In web applications, you usually need to get data from a database or other places, and then display this data in the template middle. You can assign a PHP variable to a Smarty variable using the $smarty->assign() method.

$smarty->assign('title', 'My Page Title'); $smarty->assign('content', 'This is the body of my page.');

Then, you need to use Smarty’s display() method to display the template file.

$smarty->display('mypage.tpl');

In mypage.tpl, you can use Smarty’s various template tags to display your variables and logic. The following is an example:

   
  
{$content|nl2br}
  

The above example displays the $title and $content variables assigned from PHP in the HTML page.

Summary

Smarty template engine is very important for website development, especially in large-scale application development. In order to save time and development costs, Smarty has become the most effective template engine at the moment. One of the technologies. Smarty is not just a template engine tool, it has also become one of the most practical and common PHP tools. In the future, with the development of the Internet and the PHP programming language, the Smarty template engine will become more powerful and popular.

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