| Dr. No 2006-12-15, 3:58 am |
| I used it on a corporate finance reporting project and had great success. It is
really helpful to separate the logic an presentation layers if you have an
application with a lot of logic. I have definitely seen applications where a
templating engine was not used and the resulting mix of HTML, logic and print
statements was a total, incomprehensible mess. Its also a nice compromise
between a traditional PHP app and one that uses a full on framework.
What's the drawback? Well, Smarty is its own language, albeit a simple one, and
there is a learning curve. (That difference, however, does enforce the logic /
presentation separation.) Also, it is important to secure the templates in a
file structure outside to the htdocument structure, otherwise the source code
for the templates can be readily interrogated. This is not hard if you have a
home directory that is separate from your html directory on your service. (If
you're hosting the app yourself, this should not be a problem.) It does add
complexity to file management, but the long term payoff in simplified
maintenance is significant.
There are alternatives, such as building an XSLT based solution. In theory, I
like the idea of Clearsilver, however the Clearsilver extension is experimental.
Ralph wrote:
> Hi
>
> Is it worth using on a big project or not?
>
> What are the di vantages and advantages of using it?
>
> Thank you.
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