MODx templating engine vs. Smarty?

Hi all,

MODx uses it’s own templating engine, with tags like [[something]], [{something}], [*something*], etc. For a new user like myself, this is a bit confusing in the beginning.

Somewhere in this forum I read a wish for conditional tags. Then I started wondering... What would be a "wiser" thing to do, extend the MODx tags, or use an other template engine, like Smarty or patTemplate or ...?

This is not meant as critisism, it is just a thought.

Are there any plans in the future of MODx to rework/extend the template engine?

Thanks in advance!


Bee

The MODx way would be to let you use any tempalte system you so desire. Let’s see what happens in the future ... no promises, but stranger things have happened.

As for the conditional tags, I was the one who brought it up, and Raymond answered

As for templating engine, from experience having MODx tags is way more flexible than a template engine. Consider that templating is very intricately linked to the way the application works. I think having a third party templating engine is somewhat limiting...

I know Joomla will go with patTemplate, many have Smarty, Xtemplate or phpTemplate... I like the custom approach better. Yet, the idea of being able to plug into another templating system is yet another great example of MODx’s modularity...

As long as we keep MODx tags, it’s fine by me

Ryan, David,

thank you for sharing your thoughts!

If MODx is really capable of letting you choose your templating engine of choice, that blows me away. How can a CMS be SO flexible?

I recently started to explore MODx, and I sense that is it very flexible and very powerfull. Things that are difficult in Joomla, seem simple in MODx.

The more I dive into the possibilities of MODx, the more I discover is possible. Wow! I feel overwhelmed now and then.

I think the philosophy of keeping the core simple and small and robust, and the rest are modules or plug-ins or whatever they are called , is the "right thing" to do.

I am now in the process of rebuilding two Joomla production sites in MODx and if that goes well, I will migrate to MODx and consider myself a MODx developer.

Keep up the good work!!!!


Bee

BeeStar, glad you see the huge potential of MODx !

I am learning everyday myself, being a fairly recent addition to this community

Amazing is the word, yeah...

Quote from: davidm at Jan 23, 2006, 11:46 AM

BeeStar, glad you see the huge potential of MODx !

Yes. The snippet/chunk/TV has a bit of a learning curve.

However, I start to see the beauty of them. I looked at the template of the Joomla site I am converting, and boy is that ugly with all those PHP code in it (and I am a PHP lover!). Looking at the rebuilt site in MODx, even though it is "work in progress", the template looks so clear, so simple. Much less likely to make errors, and... a shorter time to market. I can concentrate on the result instead of thinking hard at building.

Great work, MODx team!


Bee

Great to know that you’re enjoying it.

The template idea itself is somehow a common thing to all open source application, but the flexibility in having TV, chunk, and snippet to be included in a template is the thing that brought MODx into something. So the simple tag in the MODx template system is easy to understand and to be viewed by designer, while the backend to substitute that tag with some auto generated content is very powerfull, because we can achieve whatever algorithm concept to out the desired viewed to substitute that tag. If this is not enough, we can use chunk to be the template system, using either placeholder or the same kind of tag that MODx is using. So the chunk is an added point to MODx as well, for it to be able to generate a very flexible templating site, without any understanding of looping tag and etc, which are found on smarty and etc.

So... That’s my two cents to all the designer. You guys won’t be limited with current system algorithm in term of templating, especially when all the snippets start to integrate templating system using chunk, then you can use the snippet with default template, or you can add your own chunk, bit by bit to the snippet, to have a totally different look.

Have fun with MODs beestar