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Templates

Every template is an instance of the <php>Template</php> class defined in include/utils.php.

Context

Templates are intitialized with a context object, which is an associative array. The individual elements of this array are made available in the templates as regular variables (see extract). Consider the context

<PHP> $context = [

'title' => 'Home',
'page_id' => 'index'

]; </PHP>

and the template

<head>
  <title><?= $title ?></title>
</head>
<body>
   <h1><?= $title ?></h1>
   page_id: <?= $page_id ?>
</body>

</html> </PHP>

which renders as

<HTML>

<h1>Home</h1>
page_id: index

</HTML>

Template functions

The following functions are available to escape data to prevent XSS attacks.

* <php>html($data)</php> Escapes data to be used as (part of) an HTML element's content. * <php>attr($data)</php> Escapes data to be used as (part of) an HTML element's attributes. * <php>format_plain_text($text)</php> Escapes and wraps paragraphs in <p> elements. * <php>format_code($code)</php> Escapes and wraps code in <pre> elements.

WARNING! No data is escaped by default. Always escape your template variables.

The following snippet shows how these functions should be used.

<h1><?= $this->html($title) ?></h1>
<?= $this->format_plain_text($some_text) ?>
<?= $this->format_code($some_code) ?>
Author <a href="<?= $this->attr($url_to_author_page) ?>"><?= $this->html($author_name) ?></a>

</section> </PHP>

Template inheritance

Rack templates support basic template inheritance, provided by the following functions:

<php>Template→extends($template)</php> This function sets the parent template, where <php>$template</php> as a path relative to the current template.
<php>Template→begin($block_name)</php> This function begins a new block.
<php>Template→end()</php> This function ends a block.

Note that nested blocks are not supported and that blocks are only allowed in templates that extend a parent template.

The following snippets demonstrate the use of blocks and template inheritance.

page.phtml

<?php $this->extends('layout.phtml') ?>
 
<?php $this->begin('content') ?>
Hello world!
<?php $this->end() ?>

layout.phtml

<html>
  <head>
    <title><?= $title ?></title>
  </head>
  <body>
   <?= $content ?>
  </body>
</html>