Templification

Introduction

So... you have a need for templates, but you want something VERY simple and easy to drop into place in any project. That's where Templification comes in! It will take any HTML file with special tags (defined later) and turn it into a working PHP file, which you need only include() any time you want to output the contents.

Author:: Jason Schmidt

Pros and Cons

Advantages of this method

PHP Accelerators such as the Zend Accelerator and Turck-MMCache can take advantage of the precompiled PHP files and compile and cache the files instead of having to do so at run-time, which of course saves you processor cycles
Your web-designer provided source templates will take very little time to convert from raw HTML to acting templates
Extra white-space and tabs are removed, drastically reducing the throughput required for the average template file
Depends on locally scoped variables which means you need only include() the file to have instant output (which is also a supported cacheable action)

Disadvantages:

Requires the compile stage
May mess up formatting which depends on white-space (why are you writing templates this way?)
Compiled template is more difficult to debug / read

Description

This file understands only a few operations:

COMPLETELY Strip out unwanted white-space (newlines and/or tabs)
SHRINK Extra spaces ("/\s+/s" => " ")
Print expressions (normally variables)
Include other templates (raw PHP include)
Iterate over a variable (foreach style)
Conditionally execute a segment (if,elseif,else)

The tags which correspond to the above operations are as follows:

{| print_expression |}
{+ include_expression +}
{@ foreach_expression @}...{@}
{? if_expression ?} then {! if_expression !} elseif {!} else {?}

 // PRINT_EXPRESSION
 // This is a PHP expression which will RETURN text to be included
 // in the template.  This will be dereferenced to:
 <?php print( ... ); ?>

 // INCLUDE_EXPRESSION
 // This is a PHP expression which will RETURN a string containing a
 // file name to be included.  This will be dereferenced to:
 <?php include( ... ); ?>

 // FOREACH_EXPRESSION
 // This MUST be a foreach expression from PHP.  A foreach
 // expression is anything in the format "array as variable".  It
 // will be dereferenced to:
 <?php foreach( ... ) { ?> ... <?php } ?>

 // IF_EXPRESSION
 // This must be a PHP expression that you would expect to find
 // inside an if() statement.  It will be dereferenced to:
 <?php if( ... ) { ?> ... <?php } elseif ( ... ) { ?> ...
 <?php } else { ?> ... <?php } ?>

<html>
	<body>
		{| "Hello " |}
		{@ preg_split("//", "world.") as $letter @}
			{? "." == $letter ?}
				!
			{! " " == $letter !}
			{!}
				{| $letter |}
			{?}
		{@}
	</body>
</html>

Note:: This project has opted out of accepting donations as there are currently no fees involved in its devolpment. If you wish to donate, please do so to the author: Jason Schmidt. If you are interested in paying for support time or dedicated development, please contact Jason directly.

Change Log

Version:: 2.1.1

Modularized actions into functions
Actions process linearly
Actions return detailed error reporting
Errors based on character of input for back-tracing
Actions optional based on input config
Integrated detection of incomplete tags

Version:: 1.1.1

Featuring a fast simple structure with the bare minimum of everything

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Generated on Sat May 14 05:49:25 2005 for Templification by

1.4.1