Template-Based Web Development With patTemplate (part 1) (
Page 1 of 8 )
Most PHP-based Web sites are a mush of intermingled HTML
markup
and PHP function calls, making them hard to decipher and maintain. But
there *is* a simpler way - using templates to separate layout from
business
logic. This article shows you how.One of the nice things about PHP - and one of the primary reasons for its
popularity as a rapid application development (RAD) tool - is the fact that PHP
code can be inserted into regular HTML markup to turn otherwise static HTML
content into dynamic, intelligent Web pages. This feature makes it possible to
quickly write PHP scripts that build Web pages on the fly from a database (or
other external data source), and to create "smart" Web applications more
efficiently than would otherwise be possible with traditional programming
languages like Java or Perl.
However, this ease of use comes with a
price: most PHP-based Web sites are a mush of intermingled HTML markup and PHP
function calls, making them hard to decipher and maintain. This problem most
commonly rears its ugly head when interface designers need to alter the user
interface presented to Web site visitors - since the presentation information is
entwined with PHP code, changes to it typically require handholding by a
developer with sufficient expertise in the language. Which ultimately means more
people, more time and more money...
There is, however, an alternative.
This alternative solution involves using "templates" to separate
presentation and layout information from program code, and a template engine to
combine the two to create the final product. This two-tiered approach affords
both developers and designers a fair degree of independence when it comes to
maintaining a Web site, and can substantially reduce the time and effort
required in the post-release phases of a development project.
Despite
these advantages, this template-based approach is not that popular - or even
that well-known - amongst developers, especially those that are new to Web
development. And so, over the course of this two-part article, I will be
attempting to demystify how it works, in the hope that it will encourage you to
use it in your next development effort.
Which is where patTemplate comes
in...
