TemplateLite / News: Recent posts

Merry Christmas, everyone. I have just finished up the 2.20 release a little early, fixing many issues, (Especially one I created with the last release, which broke the comments tag), and I am happy to say I have run this new release against multiple tests, and even one production environment to ensure I the main features are still working correctly.

New Features

There are a few new features, which I am super excited about, and already using in my own websites.... read more

Hey there, it has been about 6 years since I last gave TemplateLite any attention. Thanks to adnan360, and the contribution of a change to the Comments parsing in the TemplateLite Compiler. Sparking my interest in this old project, to follow through with my work on it, and continue supporting it. As of now Version 2.12 has been uploaded and it is fully PHP 7+ compatible and should not generate errors or warnings. If you happen to discover any warnings or errors, please let me know, and I will work on resolving them for you.... read more

Sorry for the lack of progress since I have acquired this project. I have been running behind on everything. But good news, I am now working on a new version of TemplateLite. I have decided to take a new approach to the template syntax. It is more expessive and less verbose than the current template syntax, with an optional HTML alternative syntax. This is due to many projects that I had train designers to use the Smarty markup. It is just to programmer like for a lot of designers that dont want to learn to code in anything that even looks like a programming language. So I have been working on a language that I think is simpler for designers, and a modification to the existing language which will make it easier for those that are more comfortable with coding.... read more

and _rmdir from within the template class to the internal
directory. The program code will only be loaded if a
template requires them.

Added register_resource and unregister_resource support.
Different resources are supported by everything except for
cached template output.

Added _get_resource internal function for processing file:
and absolute tag resources.

Added resize_image plugin.

Fixed support for absolute paths to template files.
Absolute pathing wasn't functioning properly and only
halfway worked in the {include} tag. Absolute pathing
should work with the {include} tag, fetch method and
display method. The optional use of the file: designator
was added.... read more

This release has a large number of changes to the core code to make the system more modular. Many compiler functions are now modules that are loaded only if needed by a template. This greatly reduces the over all overhead by a considerable amount if you create a standard template (174k used by the compiler).

I have added support for the use of PHP functions as variable modifiers. This mimics how Smarty uses modifiers for compatibility. We have been using plugin files for this on past versions of Template Lite. This has allowed us to remove the following plugins from Template Lite (array_reverse, count, nl2br, number_format, strip_tags, ucfirst, ucwords, urlencode and wordwrap). ... read more

This version of Template Lite contains many new feature enhancements plus a couple of bug fixes. Please read the change log for more information.

This version of Template Lite moves the gzip variables from global status to public object variables.

I have also added support for the CONST reserved variable {$templatelite.const.[something]}, TEMPLATE_LITE_DIR constant variable for referencing the directory path to class files, variable list support in the {include} function and debug support for templates included with the
{include} function.

I have also fixed %section% variable usage in {if} and {math} functions, backticks around variables inside double quotes in a template file not being removed when the variable was being
processed, debug console not displaying include files and indenting and some variables inside quotes not being processed as variables if they are the FIRST item right beside the quote. Example: "$variable" not processed but " $variable" is processed.

Added support for compiler functions and default variable modifiers.

Added debugging support and a Debugging Console.

Many code enhancements for speed and lower memory usage.

Read the changelog for a complete list of additions and changes.

I made a very stupid newbie like mistake with the
SECTION function and didn't test on PHP 5. PHP 4 is far more forgiving and will allow you to do certain things that PHP 5 prevents.

I used a referenced $this outside of an object. $this is a reserved variable under PHP 5 and can only be used inside an object. Under PHP 4 there were no restrictions.

Download the patch and overwrite the compile.section_start.php in the template_lite/src/internal directory.... read more

This release has focused on achieving the closest
compatibility to Smarty as possible. Many new features have been added.

This package doesn't support objects or resources. Check the change log for a complete list of additions and changes

Added array_reverse modifier.

Added reserved_template_varname configuration variable.
This variable can be changed from templatelite to smarty.
This will allow any of your templates that use the $smarty
reserved template variable to work without editing.

Added name argument to capture block.

Changed $_TPL reserved variable to $templatelite. This
variable is used in the same manner as the $smarty reserved
variable.... read more

This release fixes the Call-time pass-by reference errors and problems with the pre/post load_filter and register filter functions.

The clear method was renamed to clear_assign for compatibility.

clear_all_assign and assign_by_ref methods have been added.

This release adds the following new functions and blocks.

>Added textformat block.

Added html_select_date, html_select_time, html_table, mailto, math, popup and popup_init function.

Added make_timestamp shared function.

Updated and expanded documentation files.

A reference notice error was being produced by the new pre/post plugins. This was not a critical error but an annoying one if notice error reporting was enabled in PHP.

I have added a number of new modifiers for those people who have been requesting them in emails.

Template lite was originally created by Paul Lockaby as a smaller replacement for Smarty®. The original package was called Smarty Light. Even though Smarty® is an Open Source project the creators of Smarty® decided to trademark the name Smarty®. Because of this trademarking of the name they contacted Paul Lockaby and told him he could nolonger use Smarty in the name for the package.

Paul Lockaby gave me permission to fork the project if I wanted as he was closing down support and developement for Smarty Light. The initial release of Template Lite contains a few minor bug fixes and some extra features. I plan on adding more features to Template Lite over the next few months. For the most part Template Lite is a drop in replacement for Smarty®. The nice thing about this package is how it uses around half of the memory of Smarty® and it is considerably FASTER and far less CPU intensive when compiling and displaying templates.