From: Bastien Koert
On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Bob McConnell <rvm@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From: Virgilio Quilario
>> That looks nice, but how do I get to the point where I can
understand
>> how to use it?
>>
>> I have also looked at the Smarty site
<http://www.smarty.net/>, but
>> their documents assume significant experience in building and
using
>> templates.
>>
>> Where can I find guidance or tutorials on how to do all of
this,
>> starting with only a rudimentary knowledge of HTML and PHP.
It would
be
>> best if they also focused on procedural rather than object
oriented
>> code.
>
>
> When I started learning smarty, I spent most of my time doing
research
> and that's really tiresome and it is so hard to find examples.
> Experimented a lot and listed those what's possible, then
applied them
> to my projects.
>
> Now to make them handy I posted them to my site so i can have
a look
> whenever and wherever.
>
http://www.jampmark.com/php-programming/16-very-useful-smarty-scripting-
tips-and-techniques-to-make-templates-smarter.html
<http://www.jampmark.com/php-programming/16-very-useful-smarty-scripting
-tips-and-techniques-to-make-templates-smarter.html>
>
> As a first step, maybe you should see the crash course at
smarty
> http://www.smarty.net/crashcourse.php
Hi Virgil,
After your last post here, I looked at your site, then the
Smarty site.
That was what triggered this question. Templates are a black art
to me.
I don't even know where to begin to understand them. Every
reference I
have looked at so far assumes that I already understand the MVC
pattern,
which is also one of the dark arts.
Let me put it simply. I can't grok OO. I tried to do OOP for
several
years, but it simply does not make any sense to me. As a direct
result,
I don't understand the concept nor application of patterns. So
how do I
figure out how to use templates without having to absorb those
first?
Can I learn enough this way to determine if a site can be
converted from
the current state (PHP and XHTML spaghetti) into templates and
begin
that transformation?
Bob,
You really would need to learn those concepts first OOP / MVC. There
is
a learning curve, but you really don't need OOP to be able to do an
MVC
style application, but it does make the code neater.
One of the books that really helped me grok OOP is Head First
OOP...another
is Martin Fowlers Patterns of Enterprise Architecture.
The MVC pattern is explained well in a number of places, but worth
checking out are both the cakephp framework site and the codeingniter
site.
You'll find that there are people from both camps here, pure OOP and
other
just as happy with procedural coding styles. Many use both, using
objects
to handle common tasks like DB interaction or filesystem processes.
Yes, I have to deal with both camps here as well. Of five developers
doing PHP at the moment, two are primarily using OOP. But I spent 3.5
years as part of a team developing MS-Windows services in C++. After all
that time, I was only able to write basic functions for others to
convert into methods or classes. I could eventually find my way around
in some of those classes, but it seemed that every time I figured out
what was where, somebody "refactored" a major component and I had to
start all over again. All I saw was a lot of unnecessary overhead and
obfuscation which made little sense in the long run and slowed down both
the development and the application. The result was a handful of DLLs
that are shared between several products, and each time anything is
changed in one of them, every product needs to be retested to make sure
nothing got broke and some have to be recertified for PCI-DSS as well.
So you are telling me that I can forget about trying to use templates.
Since I can not understand OOP, there is no chance I will be able to use
them.
Just knowing that will probably save me several weeks of frustration.
Thank you,
Bob McConnell
