ISBN:190481140XBook Description
A step-by-step guide to building PHP web sites and applications using the Smarty templating engine
- Bring the benefits of Smarty to your PHP programming
-Give your designers the power to modify content and layout without PHP programming
-Produce code that is easier to debug, maintain, and modify
-Useful for both Smarty developers and users
Smarty is a templating engine for PHP. Designers who are used to working with HTML files can work with Smarty templates, which are HTML files with simple tags while programmers work with the underlying PHP code. The Smarty engine brings the code and templates together. The result of all this is that designers can concentrate on designing, programmers can concentrate on programming, and they don't need to get in each others way so much. Even if you are developing a site on your own, Smarty is a powerful way to make your code clearer to you and others, as well as easier to debug and modify later.
This book is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of using Smarty. It will help you to:
-Install and configure Smarty on your Web server
- Understand how Smarty affects your web site architecture, and build site foundations that make the most of what Smarty offers
- Designers will learn to work with templates that contain variables and logic, to modify layouts or content of Smarty web sites
- See how Smarty caching can improve the performance of your sites
- Develop custom Smarty functions and plug-ins to incorporate into your templates
Using a step-by-step approach based on realistic examples, the expert authors show you how to use Smarty in your own PHP development. The book is ideal for PHP developers who are new to Smarty, and for web designers who are working with PHP developers who are using Smarty./p>
Reviews From AMAZON.COM
Good Reference but not everything
I found this book to be a good reference if you are not already familiar with Smarty. It gives you the basics but doesn't get too involved.
I would recommend having some PHP experience first before you buy it.
I bought it to be used as an additional programming help guide to work with X-Cart. It's been good for that.
Overall, it's worth the price.
A book to quickly master Smarty
You are looking for a simple solution to separate your PHP code from the graphics of your website? You work in a team composed of coders and graphists? Then you have already thought about templating!
Without a doubt, Smarty currently is the best templating engine available on the market. It is not famous for its simplicity but for its completeness.
This book is on the same page as the others I had the chance to read from the same editor (Packt Publishing). It was written for a wide public (from beginners to advanced) and it covers most of the subject. Thanks to this book, you will have the ability to quickly master Smarty and to use it during all your projects without many problems.
The introduction does not only handle Smarty, but rather the templating philosophy. You will also find installation walkthroughs, structural and logical Smarty internal processes.
The main part of the book is divided into two parts. The first is directed towards designers with, for the most part, creation of Template files and usage of Smarty functions. A whole chapter is dedicated to application debugging.
The other section is aimed at programmers, with details and explanation on each variable or method used in Smarty. This section is really useful on the long term, since you can come back to it any time.
You now have all the knowledge to start templating on your own, and you won't forget the experience you gained through explanations, step by step, as well as sources illustrating these pages.
You can now go further using Smarty's power by reading the following chapters about caching, plugins usage, filters and internationalization of your website.
To sum up, this is a very good book for those who are interested in Smarty and very useful for those who are already using it. But watch out: Smarty is not to be used in every website. I would like to highlight, however, that its use is far too complex to be used in a static website: you will need some dynamic components to notice any improvement. Actually, Smarty needs you to learn a new language: what you know how to do in PHP most probably has a Smarty equivalent, so that you will need a transition time.
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