Question

So we all know that you should always, not only in PHP, separate code from content/design/html. (I have seen people that say the opposite here today)

I mean, you don’t want one of these in bigger projects, do you?

<?php

echo '<div id="blah"><b>'
     . $username . '</b>'
     . $stuff . '<more HTML mixed with PHP...>';

?>

But: What is a good approach to separate code from content?

I have been using a simple template system that replaces wildcards in templates mostly.

e.g:

<div id="blah"><b>%USERNAME%</b>%STUFF% <...>

(located in a single file)

Later you can just call a function similar to GetTemplate( 'myTemplate', array ( 'USERNAME' => 'Stranger' ) );

Finally, the questions:

• Is this a good way of separating code and content?
• How do you do that when not working with a framework?
• Is there a better way?

Answer 1

Im not fan ov additional templating languages (that replace wildcards) instead i like to keep my templates pure php so my vertion of what you have done would be:

<div id="blah"><b><?php echo $username ?></b><?php echo $stuff ?><...>

echo GetTemplate( 'myTemplate.php', array ( 'username' => 'Stranger', 'stuff' => 'Stuff' ) );

function GetTemplate($templatePath, array $vars = array())
{
  extract($vars);
  ob_start();
  include($templatePath);
  return ob_get_clean();
}

I alos combine this with helper functions/object->methods as well for example:

<?php echo link_to($name, $url); ?>

function link_to($name, $url, array $attributes = array())
{
  $attributes['href'] = urlencode($url);
  foreach($attributes as $attrib => $value)
  {
     $attributes[$attrib] = $attrib."=\"$value\"";
  }
  return sprintf('<a %s>%s</a>', implode(" ",$attributes), $name);
}

I generally apply helpers like these to commonly used tags/structures as well as having a general purpose html tag one that looks something like content_tag($tag, $content, $attributes); This helps me avoid a php echo for tons of attributes for random tags. I obviously dont use it for every html tag i use only for ones where it makes for better readability than a ton of echos.

As far as templating engines go i dont really see the benefit as php is templating language. As far as non-programmers/coders they have to leanr the syntax for a loop and a variable any how so i dont see how changing it to wildcards or the {} syntax of smarty adds anything.