Smarty PHP Template Programming And Applications
- Media: Book (Paperback, 256 pages)
- ISBN: 190481140X
- Publisher: Packt Publishing
- Release Date: Apr 30, 2006
Product 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
In Detail
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.
What you will learn from this book?
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
Approach
Using a step-by-step approach based on realistic examples, the expert authors show you how to use Smarty in your own PHP development.
Who this book is written for?
This book is written for PHP developers who want to use Smarty templates in their development, and for designers who are working with PHP developers who are using Smarty.
Interesting
I am fairly familiar with PHP, and love the way you can weave it through HTML pages. SMARTY was a concept I wasn't very familiar with, since most sites can achieve a template look and feel via CSS. I found this book to be interesting and informative, to the point where I think SMARTY is a good addition to a web designer's arsenal. I recommend this book as a good starting point to understanding and using SMARTY.
Submitted 10 Nov 2009
This book is awful
In the process of learning web development, you read a lot of technical books. This is the worse technical book, Ive tried to read. To start, the book is written by three authors, not a good sign. The prose is poor. They tend to talk down to the reader. The writing is all over the place, one minute their assuming the reader is a developer, and the next minute their defining terms like: cache, and debugging for the completely unknowing designer. And that's the main problem with the book. It lacks a unified direction. It tries to be all things to everyone. It tries to cater to the technical level of every reader, the designer, the developer, the web administrator, and at the same time be a Smarty variable reference. In the end, if fails at all of them. Your better off just going to the Smarty website, and reading their documentation. Unfortunately, this is the only book currently on the market that focuses on Smarty. Don't expect to learn Smarty from this book, you'll be disappointed.
Submitted 25 Jan 2009
Good Start
This was the only book I could find for Smarty. I know some people may enjoy the adventure of learning software from the help menu, but I personally prefer to have some written details to eliminate a lot of the trial by error that will frustrate me no end.
This book gives you all the facts to getting a good start using Smarty templates.
This book gives you all the facts to getting a good start using Smarty templates.
Submitted 16 Dec 2008
Good intro to templating with Smarty
The authors do a good job of introducing you to the Smarty templating system. You'll need to have knowledge of PHP if your a programmer or XHTML & CSS if your a designer in order to make use of the Smarty templating system. As the authors state; you don't need both skill sets unless you plan on doing your projects single-handedly. I like the fact that they stick to Smarty & don't try to teach PHP, XHTML & CSS. I have very strong XHTML & CSS skills & very basic PHP & MySQL skills & find that by using Smarty you can greatly simplify looping through arrays & calling variables. I'm impressed by the apparently non-English speaking authors writing skills. I wonder if they have plans of authoring a book on PHP/MySQL & maybe even the Cake PHP development framework? The publisher PacktPub supports Open Source software development with donations from sales to Open Source projects which I consider a plus. Hopefully Open Source will take more market share from the Microsoft monopoly & promote a more innovative & prosperous internet community! Make a donation to the Smarty project if you find it useful.
Submitted 30 Oct 2008
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.
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.
Submitted 10 Jan 2007