Template system: How?

Lars

Hello!

I have a basic knowledge of PHP, can code some not very complicated scripts etc.

But what I can't understand is how the template system works?

For example, in phpBB, or in any other template script. How do you separate code from the layout? For instance, if I open the login template of phpBB there is no PHP code because it is located in the login.php file. So how did they manage to link them together?

Please explain. A link to any related topic/article is fine. But I need an understanding...

Thanks!

Frederick

A lot of templates use a "Load Into Page" system. Below is an example of one and is usable.

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Your title here</title>
</head>
<body>
<table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
<tr>
<td>HEADER GOES HERE</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><?php
// Homepage.php without the extension called - Default Page
// Call your pages without the extension such as
// index.php?page=article
// index.php?page=topics/article
$page = $_GET["page"];
if (!isset($page)) { $page = "Homepage"; }
if (file_exists("$page.php")) {
    $LoadPage = @include("$page.php");
    if (!$LoadPage) { echo "Failed to load page"; }
} else {
    echo "Sorry, the requested page does not exists";
}
?></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>FOOTER GOES HERE</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>

Lars

Thanks a lot!

But I still would really appreciate an explanation (or an article) of the basics, because the above-mentioned example is not what I actually meant. I meant the skin system that is implented in a lot of popular scripts.

But still thanks a lot for the example! I'll use it in one of my scripts.