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phphtmlsmartytemplatingtemplating-engine

Frontend Intertag Communication

I've had a question that I've been wondering for a while. I'm making a templating system for front-ends where tags are interpretted (like Smarty). I was wondering if there is value in having the tags be able to communicate with the HTML document and other "Smartyish" tags. I was hoping that the community would have some thoughts on this situation.

Benefits:

  • More power (tags can tell other tags how to look)
  • Better structure (smartyish tags behave and look just like html tags)
  • Tags can manipulate any element on the page

Drawbacks:

  • Tags can manipulate any element on the page
  • Tags can interfere with other tags
  • Code time will increase
Solution

  • I think it would make the code much more complex and harder to analyse. Where the main aproach of template engines is to make code easier to understand.

    It is not the aim templates to add much programming logic. These should be handled in the PHP script.