Smarty PHP Template Programming And Applications (Paperback)

~ Hasin Hayder (Author), J. P. Maia (Author), Lucian Gheorghe (Author)
Key Phrases: data access layer, debug console, presentation logic layer, Example Corp, File Edit, Standard Time Language (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A step-by-step guide to building PHP web sites and applications using the Smarty templating engine

• Bring the benefits of Smarty to your PHP programming
• Give your designers the power to modify content and layout without PHP programming
• Produce code that is easier to debug, maintain, and modify
• Useful for both Smarty developers and users

In Detail

Smarty is a templating engine for PHP. Designers who are used to working with HTML files can work with Smarty templates, which are HTML files with simple tags while programmers work with the underlying PHP code. The Smarty engine brings the code and templates together. The result of all this is that designers can concentrate on designing, programmers can concentrate on programming, and they don't need to get in each others way so much. Even if you are developing a site on your own, Smarty is a powerful way to make your code clearer to you and others, as well as easier to debug and modify later.

What you will learn from this book?

This book is a comprehensive guide to all aspects of using Smarty. It will help you to:

• Install and configure Smarty on your Web server
• Understand how Smarty affects your web site architecture, and build site foundations that make the most of what Smarty offers
• Designers will learn to work with templates that contain variables and logic, to modify layouts or content of Smarty web sites
• See how Smarty caching can improve the performance of your sites
• Develop custom Smarty functions and plug-ins to incorporate into your templates

Approach

Using a step-by-step approach based on realistic examples, the expert authors show you how to use Smarty in your own PHP development.

Who this book is written for?

This book is written for PHP developers who want to use Smarty templates in their development, and for designers who are working with PHP developers who are using Smarty.

About the Author

Hasin Hayder

Hasin Hayder graduated in Civil Engineering from the Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology (RUET) in Bangladesh. He is a Zend-certified Engineer and expert in developing localized applications. He is currently working as a Technical Director in Trippert Labs and managing the local branch in Bangladesh. Beside his full time job, Hasin writes his blog at hasin.wordpress.com, writes article in different websites and maintains his open source framework Orchid at orchid.phpxperts.net. Hasin lives in Bangladesh with his wife Ayesha and his son, Afif.

Joao Prado Maia

João Prado Maia is Lead Software Developer with Alert Logic, Inc. and was previously with MySQL AB as the lead developer behind Eventum, an issue tracking system, and MySQL Network, a subscription product for everything related to MySQL services. He has been working with PHP, Smarty, and PEAR for several years, and maintains phpbrasil.com, one of the most popular PHP-related community sites in Brazil. He is also interested in fostering a community of PHP developers in Houston by organizing the Houston PHP Users Group at houstonphp.org.

Lucian Gheorghe

Lucian Gheorghe has just joined the Global NOC of Interoute, Europe's largest voice and data network provider. Before Interoute, he was working as a senior network engineer for Globtel Internet, a significant Internet and Telephony Services Provider to the Romanian market He has been working with Linux for more than 8 years putting a strong accent on security for protecting vital data from hackers and ensuring good quality services for internet customers. Moving to VoIP services he had to focus even more on security as sensitive billing data is most often stored on servers with public IP addresses. He has been studying QoS implementations on Linux to build different types of services for IP customers and also to deliver good quality for them and for VoIP over the public internet. Lucian has also been programming with Perl, PHP and Smarty for over 5 years mostly developing in-house management interfaces for IP and VoIP services.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Packt Publishing (April 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 190481140X
• ISBN-13: 978-1904811404
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #101,384 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Smarty, May 19, 2006

By	Joseph Topjian (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great guide to PHP & Smarty, July 8, 2006

By	Dennis Pallett (Netherlands) - See all my reviews

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.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Smarty book, September 1, 2006

By	Guillaume Rossolini (Barcelona, SPAIN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.