Basics

Using the Templating system is pretty simple. Unpack the zip file somewhere, include it in your script, and call the static "process" method:

Template::process(templateName, optional variables, optional return);

• templateName is required, and is the name of the specific template file in the templates directory that you want to process.
• variables is optional. It is an array of variables that you want the templates to have available to them. Any variables that aren't described here will be unavailable to the template files. The use of this will be described later in this file.
• return is optional. It is a reference to a variable. If this arg is sent, instead of the page being output when process is called, it will instead store the generated page in this variable. This is useful, for example, when wanting to use a template to generate an email message.

The variables array

The variables array contains everything that you want to be accessible as a variable to the templates. There are a few variables in this, however, that have special meaning to the template software itself.

• login If set to the const LOGIN_REQUIRED, the template will look for a valid login status and if it is not found, will instead load the "login" template. This new template will also have access to a $templateURL variable which contains the original URL that was loaded. Basically, you use this to force someone to be logged in before the actual template will load, and give you the opportunity to tell the login process where the user originally tried to access.
• noBeforeGlobals If set to true, the templates to be processed before the main content will not be included in the final output.
• noAfterGlobals Like noBeforeGlobals. If set to true, the templates to be processed after the main content will not be included in the final output.

The Template Files

The template files themselves are just regular php files, without a .php extension, though if you wanted the templates to be named templatename.php, you could do so, you'd just have to send the complete filename. To prevent shifty template designers from mucking about with your code, actually the actual processing of a template file is done inside a closure where the only variables that can be accessed are the ones that you provide in the variables array. The template instance itself is always available to the processing template as $t, and provides the following functions that the template will need:

• $t->processFile(string filename)
  This is what you call to include another template. Do not send this the absolute path, it will automatically prepend the template directory root. So if you want to include your navigation bar template in the middle of another file, you can simply call $t->processFile("navigation"). The new template will have access to all of the variables that the calling template has.
• $t->vars(string variablename)
  This is how templates access the provided variables. If a variable requested does not exist, this will return null
• $t->addError(string errormessage)
  Instead of throwing exceptions, you should be adding error messages to the list with this. When your template is finished processing, an error box will be inserted between the before-content global files and your main template, which is inside the HTML element div#templateErrorMessage. Each individual message will be wrapped in a span.templateError tag and separated by <br /> tags.

Configuration

Configuring is pretty easy. Wherever the Template.php file is located, the program will look for a templates/ directory which should house the templates that will be directly processed. Inside that should be a globals/ directory, which will house, naturally, the global template files. Examples of these are in the download.

You'll want to set the following things inside the Template.php file itself:

• $beforeContent should be an array of the global templates that you want run before the main template file, in the order that you want them run.
• $afterContent should be an array of the global templates that you want run after the main template file, in the order that you want them run.
• loginFound() is just a stub currently. You should replace it with whatever you need to check to see if there is a current, valid login and have it return true/ false if you want to use the LOGIN_REQUIRED const.