[Typo3-dev] Smart Content Rendering

[Ingmar Schlecht]

JoH wrote:
> Well - if this is the logic behind your decisions against one of the most
> powerful things TYPO3 has to offer:

First of all, sorry for the confusion:
I didn't mean to say
	"TypoScript is bullshit because"
but
	"Something I don't like about using TypoScript properties for
	 templating is..."

In fact I think TypoScript is quite a handy configuration language, very 
short and easy to write. Also with things like the TS property lookup 
browser it's easy to find properties that you know but forgot how to 
spell them exactly.

I just meant content rendering, templating. I think that for that, 
TypoScript should be avoided, so no HTML tags should be contained within 
  TypoScript, but rather in an external template file - be it a 
###MARKER### template or -- because it can take care of logic as well -- 
a very basic PHP file looking roughly like that:

<h3><?= $header ?></h3>
<div>
     <ul>
       <?php foreach($rows as $row) { ?>
         <li>
            <?= $row['image'] ?>
            <?= $row['caption'] ?>
         <li>
       <?php } ?>
     </ul>
</div>

instead of

<h3>###HEADER###</h3>
<div>
     <ul>
       <!-- ###ROWS### begin -->
         <li>
            ###IMAGE###
            ###CAPTION###
         <li>
       <!-- ###ROWS### end -->
     </ul>
</div>

I think the PHP example above doesn't look much more complicated then 
the ###MARKER### template, but is more flexible.

The only problems I see in using PHP for such templating tasks are:
  - Security: The designers who create the template have can do all PHP
    offers, i.e. read out the DB password
  - It might invite people to start putting "business logic" into those
    templates, although that's not what they're meant for.

Smarty is exactly built to avoid those two problems, but then again, you 
have to learn a whole new language...
If it was possible to restrict the available PHP functions in an 
included PHP file, I reckon the PHP way of templating would be pretty 
much perfect.

cheers,
ingmar