PHP Fast Template (
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Why separate presentation from logic?
The simple answer to the question is, "It keeps things simple". If presentation wasn't
separated from logic around your house, you'd have to be an electrician to
replace light-switch covers. The same goes for large-scale web
applications. Graphic designers shouldn't need to be software engineers
in order to update the fonts in a web page. Separating logic from presentation
makes that possible.First, what is the difference between presentation and logic. Its the difference
between dealing with the appearance of an apple and dealing with its genetic
code. With web applications, presentation includes HTML tags, basic Javascript
such as rollover effects, FLASH and anything else in that vein. Logic includes
all of the software written in Python, Perl, PHP, or the p-p-p-particular
language of choice which best solves the problem at hand.
So when writing web
applications, why separate the two?
The simple answer to the question of
why presentation should be kept separate from logic is, "It keeps things
simple". If presentation wasn't separated from logic around your house, you'd
have to be an electrician to replace light-switch covers. The same goes for
large-scale web applications. Graphic designers shouldn't need to be software
engineers in order to update the fonts in a web page. Separating logic from
presentation makes that possible.
There are many ways to accomplish this,
but in this article we are going to focus on one method using PHP and an
external class called FastTemplate. This class can be downloaded from:
http://www.thewebmasters.net/php/Reminder:
Sometimes separating presentation from logic is overkill. Determine the scope of
your project.{mospagebreak title=Placing FastTemplate Variables in
HTML Templates} It's very simple to include data from an application's business
logic into HTML templates. HTML templates are files consisting of HTML with
placeholders for dynamic data.
Whenever dynamic data needs a place holder
in the HTML template, place the variable name between curly
braces.
Ex:
<HTML>
<BODY>
{HOUSE}
<P>
This is a house.
</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>
The variables can be anything that the FastTemplate class can
parse: alphanumeric symbols and the underscore, or {(A-Z0-9_)+} for you reg ex
lovers. Always keep these variables descriptive of the data that will fill it.
Remember, graphic designers will ideally be editing these templates, so they
need to know exactly what is going there. Creating charts that index which
templates contain specific variables is useful if the need ever arises to change
the names of any of them.
{mospagebreak title=Including the Fast Template
Module in PHP Code} So how does the data get from code into the HTML templates?
First, the FastTemplate class file must be included in the PHP code. Accomplish
this the same as including any external class file. Here is the code to include
the FastTemplate class file in a PHP script:
<?php
include "class.FastTemplate.php3";
Reminder: Be certain to place the path to the FastTemplate
class file into the PHP.ini file's INCLUDE_PATH
variable.
