Templating Question

miarde

Hello all.

I just wanted to know if I'm missing something obvious with the scenario below:

Problem: I am using templates (HTML/ITX) for my presentation layer. I want to keep the number of templates to a minimum (trying to make them as generic as possible). When I bind variables to the template, I'm binding things like the html for inserting a javascript file into the HEAD, for example. I've come up with a few different ways of doing this (inserting HTML fragments into the template) and wanted to know:

What is the most efficient way of doing this
What is the most maintainable way of doing this?

Ways I can see to do this:

Have functions that accept variables, wrap them in HTML and then bind them to the template

(I like this in that I can have one function and pass it a value, like a file name, and have it generate the HTML element for me but this seems to go against separating PHP from HTML)

Have files that contain the HTML fragments, then use file_get_contents and bind it to the template

(Thinking this is bad due to disk I/O)
Have functions that return HTML stored in a configuration class.

(This seems viable but not very flexible. Does this not also bloat your app by having to instantiate a big HTML container for every page load?)

Your opinions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks

miarde

Is this a stupid question? Wrong forum? Not enough info? Out shopping?

I gotta believe someone has an opinion.

wilku

Sunday? One day to Christmass Eve?

mirade wrote:
(Thinking this is bad due to disk I/O)

That, I think, you can't avoid in any way - php reads its scripts from disk as well.

Me myself handle templates for each page with classes. The main engine of the page chooses apropriate class according to GET parameters - instantiates an object and runs the starter function for this class (the last one can be done in the constructor).
My templates are organized this way: first the template for the whole page (headers, footers, menus, container for the data). The class for the page tells the main template which subtemplate to include in the container.
All this is made with Smarty (why reinvent the wheel).