Question

I have caching enabled on my smarty installation and have following Template Functions

function smarty_updatedhour($params, $smarty)
{
    $date1 = new DateTime($params['timestamp']);
    $date2 = new DateTime("now");
    $interval = $date1->diff($date2);
    $smarty->assign("updated_period", $interval->format('%h'), true);
}

I have registered the plugin as:

$smarty->registerPlugin('function', 'updated_hour', 'smarty_updatedhour', false, array('timestamp'));

I tried to test it whether it is working or not

{updated_hour timestamp=$timestamp_vale}
{$updated_period}
{if $updated_period > 10}
    // do other stuffs
{/if}

but it does not work however when I disable the smarty page caching, it works.

can anyone tell me what is the issue?

Answer 1

In Smarty3 your plugins work with the template, not the smarty object. So your function’s footprint is function smarty_updatehour(array $params, Smarty_Internal_Template $template). That’s not your problem, though. Even the assignGlobal() hint by @sudhir won’t help you one bit.

your non-caching plugin cannot assign variables, but return the actual output:

function smarty_updatedhour($params, $smarty)
{
    $date1 = new DateTime($params['timestamp']);
    $date2 = new DateTime("now");
    $interval = $date1->diff($date2);
    return $interval->format('%h');
}

that is because {$updated_period} is not non-caching. That output is evaluated EXACTLY ONCE and then written to cache. Either try {nocache}{$updated_period}{/nocache} or go with the modified plugin code above.