PHP templates - with PHP [closed]

Question

What's the most elegant templating (preferably in pure PHP!) solution you've seen?

Specifically i'm interested in handling:

1. Detecting in a repeating block whether it's the first or last element
2. Easy handling of odd/even cases, like a zebra striped table, or similar
3. Other modulos logic, where you'd do something every n'th time.

I'm looking for something that makes this less of a pain:

<?php
$persons = array('John', 'Jack', 'Jill', 'Jason');
?>

<?php $i = 0; ?>
<?php if (isset($persons)): ?>
<ul>
<?php foreach ($persons as $name): ?>
    <li class="<?= ($i++ % 2 === 0) ? 'odd' : 'even' ?>"><?= $name ?></li>
<?php endforeach ?>
</ul>
<?php endif ?>

Does it really take the mess above to create something like this below?

<ul>
    <li class="odd">John</li>
    <li class="even">Jack</li>
    <li class="odd">Jill</li>
    <li class="even">Jason</li>
</ul>

Is it only me that find the above near hideous?

All those starting and closing of php-tags makes me cringe.

Answer 1

You don't need to open the tags more than once. You can also make a function out of it if you do the same thing multiple times:

<?php
function makeul($items, $classes) {
  $c = count($classes);
  $out = "";

  if (isset($items) && count($items) > 0) {
    $out = "<ul>\n";
    foreach ($items as $item) {
      $out .= "\t<li class=\"" . $classes[$i++%$c] . "\">$item</li>\n";
    }
    $out .= "</ul>\n";
  }
  return $out;
}
?>

other page content

<?php
$persons = array('John', 'Jack', 'Jill', 'Jason');
$classes = array('odd', 'even');
print makeul($persons, $classes);
?>

Also, if you don't mind using Javascript, Jquery makes things done mod 2 pretty easy (e.g., for zebra striping a table):

$("tr:odd").addClass("odd");
$("tr:even").addClass("even");

Answer 2

Tiny But Strong

www.tinybutstrong.com

It doesn't make the smarty mistake of embedding another macro language in the page, but does allow you to handle every practical web display issue I've ever thrown at it. In particular the above odd/even constructs are a doddle. For something like your code selecting from a database table

In the PHP file

$TBS->MergeBlock('blk1',$sqlconnect, "SELECT name from people ");

And in the HTML file

<ul>
    <li class="odd">[blk.name;block=ul]</li>
    <li class="even">[blk.name;block=ul]</li>
</ul>

And that's it. Notice that the HTML is completely Dreamweaver compatible. Furthermore if I wanted to make that alternate over three line styles all I'd need to do is add the extra line, maybe with different classes, so

<ul>
    <li class="linestyle1">[blk.name;block=ul]</li>
    <li class="linestyle2">[blk.name;block=ul]</li>
    <li class="linestyle3">[blk.name;block=ul]</li>
</ul>