[TYPO3-ect] Your experiences with Smarty

[Steffen Kamper]

"Ernesto Baschny [cron IT]" <ernst at cron-it.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag 
news:mailman.1.1173348734.17871.typo3-team-extension-coordination at lists.netfielders.de...
> Steffen Kamper wrote: on 08.03.2007 10:16:
>
>>> Hello Ries, Steffen and others,
>>>
>>> meanwhile you have done some experiments with lib/div and Smarty. I 
>>> didn't
>>> work with it myself. I would like to find an answer to this question:
>>>
>>> Do we need a Smarty connector object (smartyView)?
>>>
>>> Maybe Smarty has an API itself that doesn't need a special connector
>>> object. Maybe such an object could be of help.
>>>
>>> What is your experience? What is your vision?
>
>> Ries build up a gallery with lib/div and smarty and we discussed a lot.
>> First we moved to rpt_smarty because it's the better ext, later update 
>> (but
>> still has to be updated)
>>
>> Then smartyView is used as central point for
>> - initializing smarty
>> - assigning values
>>
>> As you mentioned, there are several ways to use smarty, if smarty is
>> initialised, you can assign values from every place.
>> But to keep the model of MVC clear and the methods transparent, i would 
>> say
>> yes.
>>
>> I will do some improvements too and will update the smartyView at WE.
>
> That sounds cool. One feature I would love to see in one "official ECT"
> approach with Smarty would be a way for a developer to ship default
> Smarty templates, but the smarty class flexible to load templates from a
> custom path on demand. So I would configure:
>
> plugin.tx_myplugin.smartyTemplates = fileadmin/tx_myplugin/templates/
>
> The extension developer would ship his extension with:
>
> typo3conf/ext/myplugin/templates/singleView.html
> typo3conf/ext/myplugin/templates/listView.html
> typo3conf/ext/myplugin/templates/headElement.html
> typo3conf/ext/myplugin/templates/....
>
> And I would be able to override any (or none) of those in my own
> template directory:
>
> fileadmin/tx_myplugin/headElement.html
>
> This way I can alter just what I need but still use the extensions
> templates. It is always a pain in the ass if I have a "all or nothing"
> template like in sr_feuser_register: If I need a minor customization
> there, I need to copy the ENTIRE template over to fileadmin, and will
> probably miss new features introduced in later releases when I upgrade.
>
> I have done this in my own (non-TYPO3) project that use Smarty by using
> "register_resource" and then overwriting _fetch_template_info to change
> the default from fetching single files to searching for them in a
> "search path". Maybe there is an easier way nowadays with smarty (this
> was done some yeeeears ago already).
>
> What do you think?
>
> Cheers,
> Ernesto

Hi Ernesto,

with rpt_smarty this is no problem, because you can change templatePath with 
one line:
$this->smartyconf = array (
   'path.' => array (
    'template_dir' => $this->templatePath,
  ), 'config.' => array (
   'caching' => 0,
   'debugging' => 0
  ));

These options will be implemented in smartyView as well to show the users 
how to configure and set options to smarty.
Don't forget we still working on the basics, then there will follow more 
options. But great if you tell us your wishes - also other users should do 
;-)

vg  Steffen