RE: [Phplib-users] Template: How to handle conditional html?

[Brian P. <bp...@ct...>]

>>"I am just learning PHP and I would like to know what reasons you have
>>for that statement."

There's been a lot of discussion about it here on this forum, but my primary
reason for saying that is just personal experience. I built a system when I
first started using PHP. It was fairly complicated(100+ pages) and to be
honest it has worked very well. In that system, almost all the PHP is being
generated dynamically in the PHP. Unfortunately, this system has been a
beast to maintain. When I need to make a very simple cosmetic change, I have
to dig through pages and pages of complicated PHP code. Likewise, when I
need to make a change, even a simple change, to my code, the PHP is
needlessly cluttered with lines and lines of echo/print statements.

My new way, which works infinitely better, is to use templates almost
exclusively. I create two files for every page, one called xxxx.php and one
called xxxx.html. xxxx.php does all the thinking and xxxx.html just sits
there looking pretty.

xxxx.php will normally look something like:

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

include "../globals.php";

my_page_open();
include ABSOLUTE_ROOT . "header.php";

$t = new Template;
$t->set_file ( "main", "xxxx.html" );

$t->set_var  ( "CURRENT_DATE", date ( 'm.d.y h:i:s' ) );
...

$t->parse ( "out", "main" );  // (writes the xxxx.html file to the browser)

include ABSOLUTE_ROOT . "footer.php";
my_page_close();

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

So if I decide I want to change the date format, it's fairly easy to find it
in the xxxx.php file. Or if I decide I want to make the date fluorescent
pink, I can just pull up the xxxx.html file in Dreamweaver and modify the
formatting on the {CURRENT_DATE} tag. This is admittedly a very simple
example; the real power of templates comes when you start working with
database data, etc. Give templates a try. Once you get comfortable with the
limitations (namely dynamic HTML), I think you'll love how much more
maintainable your code becomes.

-----Original Message-----
From: Menzi, Hans [mailto:HM...@ec...]
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 10:24 AM
To: Brian Popp
Subject: RE: [Phplib-users] Template: How to handle conditional html?


 "It's normally not a good idea to put HTML in your PHP" 

I am just learning PHP and I would like to know what reasons you have
for that statement.

-Thanks
Hans Menzi


-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Popp [mailto:bp...@ct...] 
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 11:03 AM
To: 'Peter Holm'; Phplib (E-mail)
Subject: RE: [Phplib-users] Template: How to handle conditional html?


True. It's normally not a good idea to put HTML in your PHP, but I think
there's a time and a place. With a very dymamic menu, for example, I'll
usually put a single tag {menu}, and then build the HTML like so: 

function addMenuItem ( $label, $link, $active=false )
{
	$html  = "<td>";
	$html .= ($active ? "<B>" : "" );
	$html .= $label;
	$html .= ($active ? "</B>" : "" );
	$html .= "</td>";

	return $html;
}

$html  = addMenuItem ( "Home", "home/", $currentAction=="home" ); $html
.= addMenuItem ( "Links", "links/", $currentAction=="links" ); $html .=
addMenuItem ( "News", "news/", $currentAction=="news" );

$t->set_var ( "menu", $html );

(I find that if you use functions, the PHP stays very maintainable and
readable. )


-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Holm [mailto:PH...@gm...]
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2001 10:37 AM
To: Php...@li...
Subject: [Phplib-users] Template: How to handle conditional html?


Hi,

maybe some of you came across this problem also: 

there are somtimes elements of a site, that should be shown only under
certain circumstances, e.g. you have a browsing page with "previous" and
"next" buttons but you don´t wnat the 'previous" button to be shown if
there is nothing before the actual shown item, vice versa you want to
hide the "next"-button, if there is nothing next to show. Maybe you have
different pictures for this situation and maybe, to make it even more
complicated, someone wants you to have a rollover only on the "active"
next/previuos buttons.

OK, this would be easy usually with some if-statements in the code, but
when using templates, this breaks the sense of them somehow. If you use
something like {NEXT} in your template-file which contains the whole
html for that link ('a href' and img), there is nothing to see in the
template anymore (if someone is generating it with an graphic al tool).

Otherwise it is not good to use some php-code in the template-file, so I
tend to the first solution, what makes some more work...

Does anybody have any other ideas about that?

Thanks for your attention,
Peter


Have a nice thread,
Peter

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