Sourcebench - the web developer’s workplace

The vastness of web developers such as web designers and programmers are almost literally swallowing the internet with services and projects. Nonetheless some of us are just that kind of people. As many have said and many will still say - It is a job after all. A pretty complicated and creatively demanding one. With its own twists and turns, tricky places and much more desire and need than more than half the jobs in the world.

We are talking about the internet, what else is that fast moving and changing than the internet itself?

For today we have a small review about some template engines in PHP that help designers and programmers ( coders ) to do their job on fast growing websites separately from one another, while actually working together on the same project.

Yes, that is the famous CMS service we are talking about. Right now, we are going to present you some Template Engines that can help manage the CMS part of your duties or whatever you are using it for.

No use waiting more, here it goes. The first one we will talk about today is:

Smarty - http://smarty.php.net

Smarty is a template engine that has been around for quite some time. Most people think about it right away when they hear the words "template" and "engine". Well, no wonder actually as it is one of the best in the business. It is extremely easy to use, friendly and some may say even cute. The developers of Smarty say that although it is a template engine, in their opinion it is more like, and I quote, "Template/Presentation Framework". The thing is that it provides the users with an a large set of tools to do the tasks commonly with the presentation layer of an application, fully automatically. Smarty is providing a lot for us and as noted on the site I will post some of its, as they say, more notable functions like - providing fine-grained catching features, can assign variables form configuration files,a vast security measures consisting of templates that do not contain any PHP code in them, so that the template designer can use features offered by the programmer and thus, preventing him from going wild.

These are just a few of the things Smarty can do for you, your family and company. I bet you are dying to check it out, so I was and I did.

Savant - http://www.phpsavant.com

Savant is yet another template engine that is as powerful as, yet, lightweight. It works with PHP4, also "out of the box" with PHP5, but still does not adhere to E_STRICT. A serious thing about Savant is that it does not compile templates with PHP. This can be something that frustrates some, but the developers have left a lot of explanations as why they decided to make it like this - PHP is itself a template language and there is no need for another template language to get on top of it in any way.Another good thing about it is that it has an extensive error handling system and it gives users the chance to write their own compiling systems and plug it into Savant. Most of the features of Savant are prioritized and easy to use, as well nicely described and have many options providing chances to extend them.

For some Savant will be not the first choice to pick, but it is absolutely professionally made and developers still work on new additions to it. If you are interested, keep yourself posted.

Flexy - http://pear.php.net/package/HTML_Template_Flexy

Not many people might know about Flexy, especially if they have not even heard of pear.php.net, or PEAR ( PHP Extension and Application Repository ). Nonetheless, Flexy is still making its place in the top class of Template Engines. Flexy started simple and developed itself to be one of the first template engines to use real Lexer, making that possible opened new opportunities for it like - ASP.net or Cold Fusion tags. As simple as its goals are, there are things that many people will find enjoying to work with. On the link provided by us directing you to peer and the primary source of information, as well as download, of Flexy you will see a very small and direct review of its functions like - Very Simple API, easy to learn ( they all are ), Extremely fast,Easy to write 'documentable' code - and one that really makes me like it that much is this : The ability to create full featured templates, that does NOT get broken when you are using something like Dreamweaver or Mozilla as editors. Now that is something that a whole lot of people should be glad about, considering the sole fact that Dreamweaver ( a bad choice for most people, but still holding one of the highest places in web designers arsenal ) is used extremely much by newbies and professionals.

Sigma - http://pear.php.net/package/HTML_Template_Sigma

Quoting the summary on PEAR "An implementation of Integrated Templates API with template 'compilation' added". Trust what you want, but those people SERIOUSLY know what they are talking about. Sigma is designed by Ulf Wendel and is a relatively new - it is on the net since 05/19 this year, but still it has jumped a few versions, corrected a lot of bugs and made serious improvements. The tool includes nesting block, includes files from whiting the template and of course the "compiled templates" - which is something that is done separately from the source and is manageable from the "outside" so that it is easy to use and not needed to be done on every page request. Also Sigma includes a PHP Unit that provides based tests to define correct behavior. The rest of the features are put into a docs directory on the site filled with examples of how they work - right here.

This concludes the review, at least for now as there are much much more template engines out there just waiting to be dug up and went through. To be honest with you, the more information there is the better for all of us, so if any of you have comments, critics and suggestions feel absolutely 100% free to throw everything you got in mind here.

Let's say that we will be glad to get to know you.