To get a first impression of PHPTAL usage, a simple example is better than many words.
Your template is a valid xml/html document (with a root element). Here's a file named 'my_template_file.html'.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<html>
<head>
<title tal:content="title">
Place for the page title
</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1 tal:content="title">sample title</h1>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Phone</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr tal:repeat="person people">
<td tal:content="person/name">person's name</td>
<td tal:content="person/phone">person's phone</td>
</tr>
<tr tal:replace="">
<td>sample name</td>
<td>sample phone</td>
</tr>
<tr tal:replace="">
<td>sample name</td>
<td>sample phone</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>
In php, you just have to include the PHPTAL library, and maybe configure a few variables to customize the template system.
<?php
require_once 'PHPTAL.php';
// create a new template object
$template = new PHPTAL('my_template_file.html');
// the Person class
class Person {
public $name;
public $phone;
function Person($name, $phone) {
$this->name = $name;
$this->phone = $phone;
}
}
// let's create an array of objects for test purpose
$people = array();
$people[] = new Person("foo", "01-344-121-021");
$people[] = new Person("bar", "05-999-165-541");
$people[] = new Person("baz", "01-389-321-024");
$people[] = new Person("buz", "05-321-378-654");
// put some data into the template context
$template->title = 'The title value';
$template->people = $people;
// execute the template
try {
echo $template->execute();
}
catch (Exception $e){
echo $e;
}
?>
If you execute the php script, you will obtain something similar to what follows.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<html>
<head>
<title>The title value</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>The title value</h1>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Name</th>
<th>Phone</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>foo</td>
<td>01-344-121-021</td>
</tr><tr> <td>bar</td>
<td>05-999-165-541</td>
</tr><tr> <td>baz</td>
<td>01-389-321-024</td>
</tr><tr> <td>buz</td>
<td>05-321-378-654</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Well, I assume you don't mind 'too' much about carriage returns in the HTML code :) If so, you may use the tidy functions to cleanup the resulting html before echoing it.