Template Library Version 1.4.1

[eluser]paulc010[/eluser]
Colin,

I've been playing with this for a couple of days now, and feel I should provide some feedback:

Awesome work!

I have to say that even I have not managed to break this, and I've been trying out some really, really dodgy things that I never expected to be able to get to work, at least not easily!

I have a nice playground now with Modular Extensions providing "widgets" executed from within view files written (or parsed) into Template regions (I'm using load->view() from within the widgets in the modules own view files) so am really just using these as dynamically generated "partials".

I'm also happily using dwoo thanks to the superb work done by Phil Sturgeon ( http://philsturgeon.co.uk/code/codeigniter-dwoo ). Works right out of the box and creates huge possibilities!! Recommended.

As I said I've been mixing and matching different ways of including data into the final rendered output, and from reading this thread I can see that many issues would probably be solved using this approach rather than trying to use the template library for everything. As an example of what I've been playing with I have a "home" controller:

Code:

function index()
    {
        // Add any required css and javascript to the render queue
        $this->template->add_css('css/news.css');

        $data = array();

                // Do stuff to gather all the data together in here

        $this->template->parse_view('content','home',$data);
        $this->template->render();
    }

With the view file home.php containing:

Code:

{$my_variable['data']}
{modules::run('news/_embed')}

The "news" module is a simple blog controller which normally displays all the posts (actually paginated in the real controller) via the index function. When using Template I can have the blog posts within the "content" Template region as normal, but I can also add an additional function in the module controller for use when I just want to embed the data as a "partial" in another page (as in the case of the view example above):

Code:

function index()
    {
        $data = array();
        $this->_build_all($data);

        // Go ahead and render it within the template...
        $this->template->write_view('content', 'news/news_index', $data);
        $this->template->render();
    }

    function _embed()
    {
        $data = array();
        $this->_build_all($data);

        // Go ahead and render it as a partial...
        $this->load->view('news/news_index', $data);
    }

    function _build_all(&$data)
    {
        // Fill $data with the content we want to display
    }

Another topic that seems to have cropped up in the thread a few times is management of css and javascript in the header. It's great to be able to add js and css when required within normal controllers and module controllers to ensure that they will always be included, and one copy only! When it comes to the final output of the page however, it would be nice to be able to generate a single "minified" version built from the included files (obviously version checked and cached too for efficiency) as has been suggested already in this thread.

As a (temporary?) hack I've actually been experimenting with a further level of abstraction using CI's hook functionality. Using this method I can create a "template" for the page header with placeholders for the css and javascript and then insert the content after Template et al have done their work, with additional processing as required.

I'll write that up in a separate post if anyone is interested - this one is getting way too long as it is!

Once again - many thanks for your work on this!

Paul