Transphporm – a Different Kind of Template Engine
If there is one thing the world needs, it’s definitely another PHP template engine! But wait, this one is different!
Many PHP template engines (Smarty, Blade, Twig…) are little more than abstracted PHP code, making it easier to write loops, if/then/else blocks, and display variables with less verbosity than vanilla PHP. These traditional template engines require the designer to have an understanding of special syntax. The template engine must also be in place and operational in order to parse data and thus completely render the final design. Nothing wrong with this.
Transphporm follows a different approach that is generally known as “template animation”. What this means is that the web designer creates the entire HTML/CSS/JS page including placeholder content such as “Lorem Ipsum”, then the template engine comes along and replaces parts of the DOM with new data before the final render.
The benefit of template animation is that the designer does not have to know the backend code, template language, or any particular special syntax. They can use whatever tools they want to create 100% functional HTML pages.
The server-side software does not even need to function while the designer works. This means the designer doesn’t have to wait for the backend to deliver data for them to work with.
Basically, the designer can work with this:
<h1>A Good Title Here</h1>
<p>A subtitle</p>
<p>Some awesome text for clients to see.</p>
Instead of this:
<h1>{$futuretitle|upper}</h1>
<p>{$futuresubtitle|capitalize:true|default:'Default Text'}</p>
<p>{$futureawesometext}</p>
The placeholder content in the first example will be replaced by Transphporm. In the second example, the template engine must be functional and parsing the templates in order to see the final design as the designer envisions it.
Notice how the separation of concerns reaches nearly 100%. There is no special syntax or code that the designer needs to know. On the server-side, Transphporm does not need to have any HTML tags hard-coded. You don’t have logic and code on the front end, and you don’t have presentation and nodes being hard-coded in the backend.
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