README

Ultra minimalistic template engine. For those of use who don't like to spend a day setting up a framework and everything else just to make tiny tool or feature. Works great with charm/orm for simple database abstraction and charm/router for routing - but it needs neither.

I don't recommend PHP developers to learn yet another template language. The web is moving toward APIs, so I decided to write the smallest most concise version of a template engine I could - without sacrificing the nice things about blade and twig.

There really should be no limitation regarding how big projects you can use this for though. The source code is quite simple. The challenge was in getting the output buffering right, and get an elegant structure.

See below for template file examples. This is how you would use the template engine:

    // TPL will proxy properties and methods from the $user instance in your template.
    $template = new TPL('user/profile', $user);

    echo $template->render(); // echo, send mail or whatever you want.

If you are really lazy, this also works. I don't recommmend it, and will probably remove the feature because it relies on the __destruct() method.

<?php
require('vendor/autoload.php');
new Charm\TPL('hello-world', ['current_time' => gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s')]);

Installation & Setup

Install the package:

composer require charm/tpl

Create a folder for template files:

mkdir templates

Make sure the following PHP code runs before you try to render a template:

define APP_ROOT = '/var/www/html'; // Edit as appropriate

That's it! charm/tpl expects template files to have the extension .tpl.php.

A minimal master template file

We'll put this file in templates/skeleton/html5.tpl.php.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
    <head>
        <!-- $this->html() helps you NOT have to type htmlspecialchars($this->title, ENT_QUOTES) -->
        <title><?=$this->html("title"); ?></title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <main>
        <?=$this->body; ?>
        </main>

        <sidebar>
        <?=$this->sidebar; ?>
        </sidebar>

        <footer>
        <?php foreach ($this->footerBlocks as $block) { ?>
            <?=$block; ?>
        <?php } ?>

    </body>
</html>

Of course, everything is unrestricted PHP code, so you can do whatever you want.

A minimal child template file

This file could be in templates/index.tpl.php.

<?php $this->extend('skeleton/html5'); ?>

    <h1>Body Part</h1>
    <p>Whatever you output immediately after extend() will be used as the 'body' variable for the
    parent template.</p>

<?php $this->part('sidebar'); ?>

    <h2>Sidebar</h2>
    <p>This goes into the 'sidebar' variable of the parent.</p>

<?php $this->add('footerBlocks'); ?>

    <h3>Footer Block 1</h3>
    <p>Using 'add()' makes 'footerBlocks' become an array.</p>

<?php $this->add('footerBlocks'); ?>

    <?=$this->include('parts/footer-block', [ 'title' => 'Footer Block 2', 'text' => 'Some Text' ]); ?>

<?php $this->end(); ?>

A minimal reusable template part

This file could be put in `templates/parts/footer-block.tpl.php'.

<div class="footer-block">

    <h3><?=$this->html('title'); ?></h3>
    <div><?=$this->html('text'); ?></div>

</div>

charm / tpl

Maintainers

Details

README

Installation & Setup

A minimal master template file

A minimal child template file

A minimal reusable template part