Hello,
I'm trying to find a graceful solution for a problem I ran into while
trying to set up a templating system.
The problem is as such: Every traditional templating solution implies that
the template is assembled in a string with all the required data before
being sent to the browser. This for me is a Bad Thing (tm), because some
of my data is pulled off an XML webservice, which sometimes isn't too
quick about answering, and having the user stare at a blank page during
that time is just not viable. (Calls to the webservice are obviously
cached to as much of an extent as possible, so that's not the problem).
So, what I need is a way to be able to render chunks of the page as they
come in, as opposed to all at the same time, but still retain the ability
to reuse the same HTML in multiple pages. As far as I've seen so far, the
only way I can do this is to make functions with static HTML and calling
them from each page as I need them. But this isn't very mantainable, I'd
much rather use a template system that I can easily alter, much like in a
traditional template system.
As far as I know, and please correct me if I'm wrong, none of the OOB
template systems out there support this kind of behavior. Does anyone have
any ideas about how one might implement it (in PHP4, preferably)?
My best thought right now involves passing lists of function callbacks
into a template class, and having it run them as it needs them, but this
seems to be a somewhat messy approach. Any insight is appreciated.
Best,
- Alex "Sunstorm"
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