Customer Reviews

Smarty PHP Template Programming And Applications

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Smarty. The title is just as short and simple as the book itself. The first few chapters cover why you would want to use Smarty. This has always been the biggest slowdown of Smarty adoption: why use a template language? Isn't PHP already a template language? Isn't Smarty slow? What does the workflow look like? All of these questions are covered in these first few chapters. (The speed of Smarty is covered at the end in more detail, too.)

After that, the rest of the book covers the actual Smarty template language. There are two main sections that teach the reader: one section for template designers and one for programmers -- just like how the Smarty homepage is set up. Basically, each section covers the exact same material that's on the Smarty homepage, only in a more logical progression. Rather than a standard reference-manual format, these sections are laid out with several real-word projects and examples.

If you're new to Smarty, or have thought about learning it, I would definitely buy this book. However, if you're already familiar with the language, you really won't gain anything new here -- except printed documentation, which is always nice. Overall, Smarty is a great book for beginners.

If you're looking for a good book on Smarty, this one should definitely be on your list. This book takes you through every feature that Smarty offers in an easy-to-understand and practical way, with plenty of clear and concise examples to make it even easier to understand.

It doesn't matter if you're a developer who wants to start using Smarty or if you're a designer who has to start working with Smarty, this book is a great resource for both and thanks to a clear division in the book it's easy to learn about Smarty as a developer or designer.

There aren't many negative things to say about this book, but it isn't perfect either. Sometimes things are explained multiple times, with might cause some slight annoyance, and in some cases parts of an example aren't explained at all, which leaves you wondering what something is used for.

To sum it all up, this book is certainly worth the money, and I can definitely recommend it if you're looking to get started with Smarty.

No need to hide it, "Smarty PHP Template Programming and Application" is an excellent book!

Whether you are graphic designer or developer, this book is for you, thanks to a clear separation of the needs.

Every step is exposed in details : installation, utility and the way to work with Smarty is clearly explained.

You can add to this a detailed explanation of the various built-in variables and methods, differents way for managing the cache, filters and plugins,... all this makes this book a very good one, covering from he most basic to the most advanced methods.

Moreover, there's a complete chapter on "website internationalization" with Smarty.

To summarize, and I guess you already understood, this is an excellent book that any developer/designer who works with Smarty must read.

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.

You are looking for a simple solution to separate your PHP code from the graphics of your website? You work in a team composed of coders and graphists? Then you have already thought about templating!

Without a doubt, Smarty currently is the best templating engine available on the market. It is not famous for its simplicity but for its completeness.

This book is on the same page as the others I had the chance to read from the same editor (Packt Publishing). It was written for a wide public (from beginners to advanced) and it covers most of the subject. Thanks to this book, you will have the ability to quickly master Smarty and to use it during all your projects without many problems.

The introduction does not only handle Smarty, but rather the templating philosophy. You will also find installation walkthroughs, structural and logical Smarty internal processes.
The main part of the book is divided into two parts. The first is directed towards designers with, for the most part, creation of Template files and usage of Smarty functions. A whole chapter is dedicated to application debugging.
The other section is aimed at programmers, with details and explanation on each variable or method used in Smarty. This section is really useful on the long term, since you can come back to it any time.

You now have all the knowledge to start templating on your own, and you won't forget the experience you gained through explanations, step by step, as well as sources illustrating these pages.

You can now go further using Smarty's power by reading the following chapters about caching, plugins usage, filters and internationalization of your website.

To sum up, this is a very good book for those who are interested in Smarty and very useful for those who are already using it. But watch out: Smarty is not to be used in every website. I would like to highlight, however, that its use is far too complex to be used in a static website: you will need some dynamic components to notice any improvement. Actually, Smarty needs you to learn a new language: what you know how to do in PHP most probably has a Smarty equivalent, so that you will need a transition time.

[...]

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.

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.

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.

The code errors are inexcusable. The code doesn't work for smarty 3. I can run the demos from the smarty website. do not waste your money. Just go to the smarty web site and learn smarty from there.
This is the last book I will buy from pact publishing.
Im sticking with o'Reilly books.

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.