284 lines
12 KiB
Text
284 lines
12 KiB
Text
QUESTION INDEX
|
|
--------------
|
|
|
|
GENERAL
|
|
|
|
Q: What is Smarty?
|
|
Q: What's the difference between Smarty and other template engines?
|
|
Q: What do you mean "Compiled PHP Scripts" ?
|
|
Q: Why can't I just use PHPA (http://php-accelerator.co.uk) or Zend Cache?
|
|
Q: Why does smarty have a built in cache? Wouldn't it be better to handle this
|
|
in a separate class?
|
|
Q: Is Smarty faster than <insert other PHP template engine>?
|
|
Q: How can I be sure to get the best performance from Smarty?
|
|
Q: Do you have a mailing list?
|
|
Q: Can you change the mailing list so reply-to sends to the list and not the
|
|
user?
|
|
|
|
TROUBLESHOOTING
|
|
|
|
Q: Smarty doesn't work.
|
|
Q: I get the following error when running Smarty:
|
|
Warning: Smarty error: problem creating directory "templates_c/239/239105369"
|
|
in /path/to/Smarty.class.php on line 542
|
|
Q: I get the following error when running Smarty:
|
|
Warning: Wrong parameter count for preg_replace() in
|
|
Smarty.class.php on line 371
|
|
Q: I get this error when passing variables to {include}:
|
|
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_defined_vars() in
|
|
/path/to/Smarty/templates_c/index.tpl.php on line 8
|
|
Q: I get PHP errors in my {if} tag logic.
|
|
Q: I'm changing my php code and/or templates, and my results are not getting
|
|
updated.
|
|
Q: I'm running Windows 2000 and I get blank content. My compiled PHP files are
|
|
also zero length.
|
|
Q: The template goes into an infinite loop when I include included templates
|
|
that pass local variables
|
|
Q: Javascript is causing Smarty errors in my templates.
|
|
Q: I get "SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. ..."-errors when running smarty.
|
|
|
|
MISC
|
|
|
|
Q: Can I use Macromedia's Dreamweaver to edit my templates?
|
|
Q: Dreamweaver is urlencoding the template delimiters when they are in a SRC or
|
|
HREF link. How do I get around this?
|
|
|
|
HOWTO
|
|
|
|
Q: How do I generate different cache files per template based on arguments
|
|
passed to the page?
|
|
Q: How do I pass a template variable as a parameter? {function param={$varname}}
|
|
does not work.
|
|
Q: How do I include cached template(s) within a non-cached template?
|
|
|
|
|
|
GENERAL
|
|
-------
|
|
|
|
Q: What is Smarty?
|
|
A: Smarty is a template engine for PHP... but be aware this isn't just another
|
|
PHP template engine. It's much more than that.
|
|
|
|
Q: What's the difference between Smarty and other template engines?
|
|
A: Most other template engines for PHP provide basic variable substitution and
|
|
dynamic block functionality. Smarty takes a step further to be a "smart"
|
|
template engine, adding features such as configuration files, template
|
|
functions, variable modifiers (see the docs!) and making all of this
|
|
functionality as easy as possible to use for both programmers and template
|
|
designers. Smarty also compiles the templates into PHP scripts, eliminating
|
|
the need to parse the templates on every invocation, making Smarty extremely
|
|
scalable and manageable for large application needs.
|
|
|
|
Q: What do you mean "Compiled PHP Scripts" ?
|
|
A: Smarty reads the template files and creates PHP scripts from them. Once
|
|
these PHP scripts are created, Smarty executes these, never having to parse
|
|
the template files again. If you change a template file, Smarty will
|
|
recreate the PHP script for it. All this is done automatically by Smarty.
|
|
Template designers never need to mess with the generated PHP scripts or even
|
|
know of their existance. (NOTE: you can turn off this compile checking step
|
|
in Smarty for increased performance.)
|
|
|
|
Q: Why can't I just use PHPA (http://php-accelerator.co.uk) or Zend Cache?
|
|
A: You certainly can, and we highly recommend it! What PHPA does is caches
|
|
compiled bytecode of your PHP scripts in shared memory or in a file. This
|
|
speeds up server response and saves the compilation step. Smarty creates PHP
|
|
scripts, which PHPA will cache nicely. Now, Smarty's built-in cache is
|
|
something completely different. It caches the _output_ of the template
|
|
contents. For example, if you have a template that requires several database
|
|
queries, Smarty can cache this output, saving the need to call the database
|
|
every time. Smarty and PHPA (or Zend Cache) complement each other nicely. If
|
|
performance is of the utmost importance, we would recommend using one of
|
|
these with any PHP application, using Smarty or not. As you can see in the
|
|
benchmarks, Smartys performance _really_ excels in combination with a PHP
|
|
accelerator.
|
|
|
|
Q: Why does Smarty have a built in cache? Wouldn't it be better to handle this
|
|
in a separate class?
|
|
A: Smarty's caching functionality is tightly integrated with the template
|
|
engine, making it quite a bit more flexible than a simple caching wrapper.
|
|
For instance, you can cache select portions of a template page. Let's say
|
|
you have a polling box on your site. With Smarty, you can leave the poll
|
|
dynamic and cache the rest of the page. You can also pass templates
|
|
multiple cache ids, meaning that a template can have several caches
|
|
depending on URL, cookies, etc.
|
|
|
|
Q: Is Smarty faster than <insert other PHP template engine>?
|
|
A: See the benchmark page for some performance comparisons. Smarty's approach
|
|
to templates is a bit different from some languages: it compiles templates
|
|
into PHP scripts instead of parsing them on each invocation. This usually
|
|
results in great performance gains, especially with complex templates.
|
|
Coupled with the built-in caching of Smarty templates, the performance is
|
|
outstanding.
|
|
|
|
Q: How can I be sure to get the best performance from Smarty?
|
|
A: Be sure you set $compile_check=false once your templates are initially
|
|
compiled. This will skip the unneeded step of testing if the template has
|
|
changed since it was last compiled. If you have complex pages that don't
|
|
change too often, turn on the caching engine and adjust your application so
|
|
it doesn't do unnecessary work (like db calls) if a cached page is
|
|
available. See the documentation for examples.
|
|
|
|
Q: Do you have a mailing list?
|
|
A: We have a few mailing lists. "general" for you to share your ideas or ask
|
|
questions, "dev" for those interested in the development efforts of Smarty,
|
|
and "cvs" for those that would like to track the updates made in the cvs
|
|
repository.
|
|
|
|
send a blank e-mail message to:
|
|
smarty-general-subscribe@lists.php.net (subscribe to the general list)
|
|
smarty-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net (unsubscribe from the general list)
|
|
smarty-general-digest-subscribe@lists.php.net (subscribe to digest)
|
|
smarty-general-digest-unsubscribe@lists.php.net (unsubscribe from digest)
|
|
smarty-dev-subscribe@lists.php.net (subscribe to the dev list)
|
|
smarty-dev-unsubscribe@lists.php.net (unsubscribe from the dev list)
|
|
smarty-cvs-subscribe@lists.php.net (subscribe to the cvs list)
|
|
smarty-cvs-unsubscribe@lists.php.net (unsubscribe from the cvs list)
|
|
You can also browse the mailing list archives at
|
|
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=smarty&r=1&w=2
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Q: Can you change the mailing list so Reply-To sends to the list and not the
|
|
user?
|
|
A: Yes we could, but no we won't. Use "Reply-All" in your e-mail client to send
|
|
to the list. http://www.unicom.com/pw/reply-to-harmful.html
|
|
|
|
TROUBLESHOOTING
|
|
---------------
|
|
|
|
Q: Smarty doesn't work.
|
|
A: You must be using PHP 4.0.6 or later if you use any version of Smarty
|
|
past 2.0.1. Read the BUGS file for more info.
|
|
|
|
Q: I get the following error when running Smarty:
|
|
Warning: Smarty error: problem creating directory "templates_c/239/239105369"
|
|
in /path/to/Smarty.class.php on line 542
|
|
A: Your web server user does not have permission to write to the templates_c
|
|
directory, or is unable to create the templates_c directory. Be sure the
|
|
templates_c directory exists in the location defined in Smarty.class.php,
|
|
and the web server user can write to it. If you do not know the web server
|
|
user, chmod 777 the templates_c directory, reload the page, then check the
|
|
file ownership of the files created in templates_c. Or, you can check the
|
|
httpd.conf (usually in /usr/local/apache/conf) file for this setting:
|
|
User nobody
|
|
Group nobody
|
|
|
|
Q: I get the following error when running Smarty: Warning: Wrong parameter
|
|
count for preg_replace() in Smarty.class.php on line 371
|
|
A: preg_replace had a parameter added in PHP 4.0.2 that Smarty
|
|
requires. Upgrade to at least 4.0.6 to fix all known PHP issues with
|
|
Smarty.
|
|
|
|
Q: I get this error when passing variables to {include}:
|
|
Fatal error: Call to undefined function: get_defined_vars() in
|
|
/path/to/Smarty/templates_c/index.tpl.php on line 8
|
|
A: get_defined_vars() was added to PHP 4.0.4. If you plan on passing
|
|
variables to included templates, you will need PHP 4.0.6 or later.
|
|
|
|
Q: I get PHP errors in my {if} tag logic.
|
|
A: All conditional qualifiers must be separated by spaces. This syntax will not
|
|
work: {if $name=="Wilma"} You must instead do this: {if $name == "Wilma"}.
|
|
The reason for this is syntax ambiguity. Both "==" and "eq" are equivalent
|
|
in the template parser, so something like {if $nameeq"Wilma"} wouldn't be
|
|
parsable by the tokenizer.
|
|
|
|
Q: I'm changing my php code and/or templates, and my results are not getting
|
|
updated.
|
|
A: This may be the result of your compile or cache settings. If you are
|
|
changing your php code, your templates will not necessarily get recompiled
|
|
to reflect the changes. Use $force_compile during develpment to avoid these
|
|
situations. Also turn off caching during development when you aren't
|
|
specifically testing it. You can also remove everything from your
|
|
compile_dir and cache_dir and reload the page to be sure everything gets
|
|
regenerated.
|
|
|
|
Q: I'm running Windows 2000 and I get blank content. My compiled PHP files are
|
|
also zero length.
|
|
A: There seems to be a problem with some W2k machines and exclusive file
|
|
locking. Comment out the flock() call in _write_file to get around this,
|
|
although be aware this could possibly cause a problem with simultaneous
|
|
writes to a file, especially with caching turned on. NOTE: As of Smarty
|
|
1.4.0, a workaround was put in place that should solve this.
|
|
|
|
Q: The template goes into an infinite loop when I include included templates
|
|
that pass local variables
|
|
A: This was fixed in 1.3.2 (new global attribute)
|
|
|
|
Q: Javascript is causing Smarty errors in my templates.
|
|
A: Surround your javascript with {literal}{/literal} tags. See the docs.
|
|
|
|
Q: I get "SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. ..."-errors when running smarty.
|
|
A: Use $smarty->use_sub_dirs = false when running php in safe mode.
|
|
|
|
MISC
|
|
----
|
|
|
|
Q: Can I use Macromedia's Dreamweaver to edit my templates?
|
|
A: Certainly. You might want to change your tag delimiters from {} to something
|
|
that resembles valid HTML, like <!--{ }--> or <{ }> or something similar.
|
|
This way the editor won't view the template tags as errors.
|
|
|
|
Q: Dreamweaver is urlencoding the template delimiters when they are in a SRC or
|
|
HREF link. How do I get around this?
|
|
A: In Edit - Properties - Rewrite HTML you can specify if Dreamweaver should
|
|
change special letters to %-equivalent or not. The default is on which
|
|
produces this error.
|
|
|
|
HOWTO
|
|
-----
|
|
|
|
Q: How do I generate different cache files per template based on arguments
|
|
passed to the page?
|
|
A: Use your $REQUEST_URI as the cache_id when fetching the page:
|
|
|
|
global $REQUEST_URI; // if not already present
|
|
$smarty->display('index.tpl',$REQUEST_URI);
|
|
|
|
This will create a separate cache file for each unique URL when you call
|
|
index.tpl. See the documentation for display() and fetch()
|
|
|
|
Q: How do I pass a template variable as a parameter? {function param={$varname}}
|
|
does not work.
|
|
A: {function param=$varname} (You cannot nest template delimiters.)
|
|
|
|
Q: How do I include cached template(s) within a non-cached template?
|
|
A: One way to do it:
|
|
|
|
$smarty->caching = true;
|
|
$tpl1 = $smarty->fetch("internal1.tpl");
|
|
$tpl2 = $smarty->fetch("internal2.tpl");
|
|
$tpl3 = $smarty->fetch("internal3.tpl");
|
|
|
|
$smarty->assign("tpl1_contents",$tpl1);
|
|
$smarty->assign("tpl2_contents",$tpl2);
|
|
$smarty->assign("tpl3_contents",$tpl3);
|
|
|
|
$smarty->caching = false;
|
|
$smarty->display('index.tpl');
|
|
|
|
index.tpl
|
|
---------
|
|
|
|
<table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>{$tpl1_contents}</td>
|
|
<td>{$tpl2_contents}</td>
|
|
<td>{$tpl3_contents}</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table>
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Another approach:
|
|
|
|
You could write a custom insert function to fetch your internal
|
|
templates:
|
|
|
|
<table>
|
|
<tr>
|
|
<td>{insert name=fetch_tpl tpl="internal1.tpl"}</td>
|
|
<td>{insert name=fetch_tpl tpl="internal2.tpl"}</td>
|
|
<td>{insert name=fetch_tpl tpl="internal3.tpl"}</td>
|
|
</tr>
|
|
</table>
|