stefanobalocco/smalltal

A (basic|simple) PHP implementation of the ZOPE Template Attribute Language

SmallTAL

A php template engine based on TAL, an attribute-based template engine., _(*1)

There is at least two other php tal implementation (PHPTAL, for example), but this implementation was written thinking about size and speed; tal templates are converted into php code (without the inner data), allowing to reuse them without the need of future conversion. Each time a template is requested, if the template/metal file/smalltal source was modified after the template compilation, the library recompile the template into php code. The template engine isn't an html parser/beautifier, so won't correct your template., _(*2)

It's licensed under a BSD-like license., _(*3)

Using

To use SmallTAL you need to do:, _(*4)

1) Create a temp directory, a cache directory and a template directory, _(*5)

2) Template directory should have this structure: | Templates +-- TemplateName.metal.html < macros for the template +--| TemplateName +-- PageName.html, _(*6)

3) Use the library in your project, for example:, _(*7)

include( 'SmallTAL.php' ); $data_required_by_the_template = array ( 'variabile' => 'a value', 'arrayVariable' => array ( 'some data', 'some other data' ) ); $smallTALpaths = array ( 'temp' => '/path/to/temp/directory', 'template' => '/path/to/the/template/directory', 'cache' => '/path/where/cache/file/will/be/stored' );, _(*8)

$returnValue = SmallTAL( "TemplateName", "PageName", $data_required_by_the_template, $smallTALpaths );, _(*9)

If you want to obtain the template in a variable, you should use ob_start()/ob_get_clean()., _(*10)

You can look the SmallTAL.Tests.php (it's a PHPUnit test case) file and/or the tests folder., _(*11)

Unsupported TAL/TALES features

This is a minimal TAL template engine, optional features isn't supported. Also on-error isn't supported., _(*12)

Usefull links

TAL specification: http://wiki.zope.org/ZPT/TALSpecification14 TALES specification: http://wiki.zope.org/ZPT/TALESSpecification13 METAL specification: http://wiki.zope.org/ZPT/METALSpecification10 Owlfish TAL, TALES and METAL reference: http://www.owlfish.com/software/simpleTAL/tal-guide.html, _(*13)