Re: [PHP Template] Re: [PHP3] template engine example document

Andrei Zmievski wrote:
> 
> Hi, Nick.
> 
> > I didn't like the difference between $ and @ though, they could be the
> > same
> > thing really, like:
> > {section}
> >     <td>$articleTitle</td>
> >     <td>$articleDate</td>
> > {/section}
> >
> > How would it be differently used.
> 
> This is how we tried to do it originally. One of the problems with this
> approach is that the engine would need to detect at run-time which
> variables have multiple values so that it knows that it needs to loop
> through them instead of simply printing out the value. Anything done at
> run-time is slower, of course. Another reason we thought @ would be nice
> is because it's visually clear which variables have multiple values and
> are being looped through (@ looks like a loop).
> 
> > There is one thing I would like shown to me though.  If I want to skip
> > tags
> > when a value is empty, how would this be.  Is this the only way:
> > {if $value}
> >     $value<br>
> > {/if}
> >
> > would be nicer to link the tag to the var somehow, like:
> > {$value{<br>}}
> > but maybe some better syntax.
> 
> If it's a looping variable, you can do this:
> 
> {section}@value<br>{/section}
> 

This just answered your first question :-) Only looping variables affect
section collapsing, so there needs to be a distinction between looping
and single-value variables. That is why "$" and "@" were introduced.
Maybe there is a better way?


> because sections automatically collapse if variables inside them have no
> values.
> 
> > Also how would a blank value be changed to &nbsp; for example, can you
> > define defaults for a value somehow, e.g.:
> > {$value default="&nbsp;"}
> 
> Once again, you'd probably want to do this only for looping variables,
> when they run out of values. For single value variables, it wouldn't be
> too useful. Unless you have a good example?
> 

And to answer your question, variables can have a default value
attribute just like your example. See the specs.

Monte