[SOLVED] Potential noob question...

[deadfrog]

Hi chaps - I've just made the jump from ASP to PHP and am already wondering why I didn't do it sooner. Anyway, one of my learning techniques has been to download and check through things like phpBB and other such things, and I notice they declare constants almost, using a {SITE_NAME} style syntax. I'm keen to learn more about this technique and am happy to hunt the information down on the internet, but I just don't know what it's called so not sure what to search for...

 

Any pointers would be hugely appreciated, I only just found this site and it looks grand!

 

Best regards,

Andy.

[redbullmarky]

PHPBB uses a template engine of its own, which essentially means that all of the main forum code is kept seperate from the files that are essentially the HTML. If you look in a template directory at some of the files, you probably wont see any php at all.

 

The {SITE_NAME} example just means that where the variable $site_name (or something like that) has been set, replace all instances of {SITE_NAME} with the contents of the variable. The idea is that it allows designers to create templates/skins without breaking the actual code, and is allegedly less intimidating to use {SITE_NAME} rather than <?=$site_name ?> or <?php echo $site_name ?>

 

Smarty is a template engine that uses these types of tokens, if you wish to go down that road. Personally I chose the method laid out here:

http://www.massassi.com/php/articles/template_engines/ which essentially does the same thing - ie, seperates business logic from presentation logic, but not forgetting that you dont need an entire new syntax to do it...

 

 

The short answer to your question: Templating/Template Engines.

 

Hope it helps!

Cheers

[deadfrog]

Ahha, template engines look like exactly what I was talking about, thanks muchly mate, and for the record peas are ace.

 

Andy.