Re: [htmltmpl] how to determine if tmpl_var exists in a loop?

[Puneet K. <pk...@ei...>]

On Apr 17, 2004, at 1:37 PM, Clifton Royston wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 17, 2004 at 11:44:45AM -0500, Puneet Kishor wrote:
>> On Apr 17, 2004, at 11:25 AM, Karen J. Cravens wrote:
>>> On Sat, 17 Apr 2004, Puneet Kishor wrote:
>>>
>>> PK>What is/are a typical circumstance(s) where I would not already 
>>> know
>>> PK>what vars exist in a template and would want to use query to find
>>> out?
>>>
>>> It's the split between template and programming thing.  I've 
>>> considered
>>
>> On Apr 17, 2004, at 11:18 AM, Roger Burton West wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, Apr 17, 2004 at 11:10:35AM -0500, Puneet Kishor wrote:
>>>
>>>> What is/are a typical circumstance(s) where I would not already know
>>>> what vars exist in a template and would want to use query to find 
>>>> out?
>>>
>>> The most obvious case is the one in which someone else is being given
>>> the HTML design part of the job.
>>
>> Interesting. I have approached this always with the attitude that I
>> have to separate programming from display as much as possible. I've
>> just finished a relatively complicated app -- a single cgi script 
>> about
>> 2000 lines long, and about 45 different templates. My approach has 
>> been
>> to create the templates in such a way that they could exist as a
>> standalone website even if there was no H-T involved. In other words,
>> if a designer-type decided to load the entire templates folder with 
>> its
>> stylesheets and javascripts and whatnot in a designer-type program
>> (GoLive or Dreamweaver, etc.), a complete, well-formed website would
>> manifest, of course, with tmpl_vars intact. It may look a bit kooky
>> since tables won't be fleshed out, and a few unavoidable tmpl_ifs 
>> won't
>> be logic-ed out, but nonetheless -- it would be a website with all its
>> links and scripts and behaviors and whatnot.
>
>   That's exactly the approach I decided we should take for designing
> our GUI.  In fact, the final form of most of the templates was created
> in Dreamweaver.
>
>   On a similar principle, I made the various CGI scripts for displaying
> the templates load the template with the name exactly corresponding to
> the URL it's invoked under.  That sounds a little confusing to say, but
> it just means that if you go to an URL like /admin/home/news.html, the
> CGI will pick up that URL and open and render a template from the path
> .../templates/home/news.html.
>
>

Clifton,

That is really cool. Could you (here, or offline) share more about how 
you did this? In effect, the users are not going to 
index.cgi?do=somecrap, but they are going to /website/somecrap. So you 
can use path_info, but how are you getting the cgi to fire up?

I know this can be accomplished somewhat with the help of mod_rewrite, 
but that is not always possible. I am very interested in knowing how 
you are accomplishing this.

Thanks.