Question

I wanted opinion is it a good practice to do things like this while working with MVC architecture:

{foreach from=$items item="list"}
  {if $list.index < 5}
    {assign value="good" var=$class_name}
  {else}
    {if $list.index % 2 eq 1}
      {assign value="bad" var=$class_name}
    {else}
      {assign value="average" var=$class_name}
    {/if}
  {/if}
{/foreach}

Or should I do such things inside php and then just access with:

{foreach from=$items item="list"}
  {$list.class_name}
{/foreach}

The reason I’m asking this is, because I was told it’s need to be done inside templates(because it’s styling issues and etc), but I think opposite, I think it needs to be done inside PHP controller so that way you leave templates a little bit cleaner.

So what is the better approach and why?

Answer 1

If you referring class_name as in the <a **class="class_name"**>, then yes, You should generate that in the smarty template so that the template has control over how it should look. If you referring class_name to something else that is class Class_name, and you want to print that out. Then no, it should stay within your PHP code.

But all these are neither best practices stated anywhere or documented, but more company standard or team lead preferences. And you do what they want if you want to keep your job smooth and easy.