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.
Using the above information as a guide, look at this code that works on data taken from a MySQL database and parses it through HTML templates.
<?php
//getData.php
include "class.FastTemplate.php3";
//instantiate a new FastTemplate instance
$tpl = new FastTemplate("../templates");
//associate an HTML template to a variable
$tpl->define(array(
"toplevel" => "phone_numbers.tpl"
));
//Connect to database
mysql_connect (localhost, root, passwd);
//select database to use
mysql_select_db (testDB);
//select data from MySQL database for example code
$GetData = mysql_query ("select Phone from Business where Name = '$Name'");
//Get array results
$GetDataArray = mysql_fetch_array($GetData);
//Associate contents of hash array with variable
$Phone = $GetDataArray["Phone"];
//assign $Phone to FastTemplate instance
$tpl->assign("PHONE", $Phone);
//pass the data to the HTML template
$tpl->parse(MAIN, "toplevel");
$tpl->FastPrint();
?>
From here, the phone number data taken from the database will
be passed to the HTML template, "phone_numbers.tpl". Here are the contents of phone_numbers.tpl :
<HTML>
<BODY>
<P>
Here is the phone number you wanted:
{PHONE}
</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>
