It's been a while

I have been using my own templating engine for a while now as I wasn't happy with how blade & co handle certain things. Additionally, any kind of logic within the view is a violation of separation of concerns in my view.

However, after living with a few issues for a while, I finally decided to rewrite it completely:

use Neoan3\Apps\Template\Constants;
use Neoan3\Apps\Template\Template;

require_once 'vendor/autoload.php';

// optional, if set, path defines the relative starting point to templates
Constants::setPath(__DIR__ . '/templates');

echo Template::embrace('<h1>{{test}}</h1>',['test'=>'Hello World']);

<h1>{{user}}</h1>
<p>{{profile.name}}</p>
<p n-for="items as

Happy accidents

I have had a way of adding project-specific functionality to the engine and wanted to keep it open for special needs.
By simplifying the hook-process, I noticed something interesting:

In theory, one can now use this package to create specific behavior utilizing two capabilities:

customFunctions

We are usually under full control of the data we are sending to the rendering mechanism when dealing with SSR sites, but sometimes we want to leave e.g. a model as is. So let's build a salutation template function:

Template\Constants::addCustomFunction('salutation', function($gender)
{
   $salutation = 'Mrs.';
   if($gender === 1){
      $salutation = 'Mr.';
   } elseif($gender > 1){
      $salutation = 'Mx.';
   }
});

In our template, we can now use this function:

<!-- profile.html -->
<div>
   <p>Hello, {{salutation(user.gender)}} {{user.lastName}}</p>
</div>

$user = [
   'gender' => 0,
   'firstName' => 'Samantha',
   'lastName' => 'Smith',
   'birthDay' => '1990-06-06',
   'website' => 'https://sam-smith-1990.com'
];
echo Template\Template::embraceFromFile('/profile.html', ['user' =>$user]);

output

<div>
   <p>Hello, Mrs. Smith</p>
</div>

This is, of course, a very constructed example, but you get the idea. Another way of implementing additional functionality is via the method

customAttributes

With this we can hook into attribute-interpretation of the template engine. Let's have a look:

Template\Constants::addCustomAttribute('secure-link', function($attr)
{
   $href = $attr->parentNode->getAttribute('href')->nodeValue;
   // external?
   if(
      !str_contains($href, $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] && 
      str_starts_with($href, 'http'))
     )
   {
      $attr->parentNode->setAttribute('target', '_blank');
      $attr->parentNode->setAttribute('rel', 'noopener noreferrer');
   }
});

<!-- profile.html -->
<div>
   <p>Hello, {{salutation(user.gender)}} {{user.lastName}}</p>
   <a href="{{user.website}}" secure-link>{{user.website}}</a>
</div>

output

<div>
   <p>Hello, Mrs. Smith</p>
   <a href="https://sam-smith-1990.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">https://sam-smith-1990.com</a>
</div>

I know these examples are rather strange, but due to the reusability one could easily build together a templating mechanism suited to personal needs.
As usual, leaving a star when playing around with the repo is appreciated.

Discussion

Now to the fun part: What has always bothered you when having to deal with passing data to your templating mechanism? What do you wish was less of a hassle?