Are template engines useful, if I have MySQL?

Lahloob

Hello guys,

I have downloaded a template engine: Smarty templates (http://smarty.php.net), and learned how to use it -- and everything is fine now ..
It is a very huge and great system honestly .. and I bet they've spent whatever long time to make it available ..

I urgently need to separate the design from the code, and also I need to make template modification very easy for the administrators ..

Thus, I thought that defining a table in MySQL named (mytemplates) for exmple .. and assigning to this table different attributes like (template_name, template_id, tamplate_value,...etc) :

Let's take the following example, as a very simple template that only contains PHP and HTML:

"<B>Welcome $username to my homepage</B>"

Assume template_name="welcome_message"..

Whenever I need to use this template, I just query it ..

My debate is:
using MySQL to store templates is better than using template engines, for the following reasons:

1) You will not need to learn new things .. (assuming you know php & mysql)..
2) Modifying templates will be far easier, because you would not need to open files, which might not be always available under Unix .. due to chmod stuff .. You just need to manage them in a control panel.
3) Template engines are always subject to have bugs ..
4) Template engines are not standardized .. each one has its own style ..

I just wonder, what makes template engines important, if I can use MySQL? What things are available in these engines and not available if you store your (PHP & HTML & possible javascripts) in MySQL ?

Any ideas ..

Frederick

You must have a minimum of a base template engine to operate your main tags. If you call your php, head, body and html tags from MySQL, you are openning yourself to a hacker corrupting your site. A hacker can place malicious code into your sql and cause all kinds of problems to your site. If you have an interactive site, a user can insert malicious code into a query and this will cause problems because you allowed these tags to display.

To use these tags, you must specify in your content pages to allow these tags. By default, PHP strips the head, html and PHP tags from a query.

The best form of using a template engine is to create multiple themes and layouts. Place the names of these themes into MySQL and call those. You can call the name of the theme based on the sites address, site settings or site conditions. Options are unlimited.

Have in MySQL fields like:
templateID
themePath
templatePath

I use this method here.
http://ronfrederick.com/ss/