Troubleshooting

Smarty/PHP errors

Smarty can catch many errors such as missing tag attributes or malformed variable names. If this happens, you will see an error similar to the following:

Warning: Smarty: [in index.tpl line 4]: syntax error: unknown tag - '%blah'
       in /path/to/smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1041

Fatal error: Smarty: [in index.tpl line 28]: syntax error: missing section name
       in /path/to/smarty/Smarty.class.php on line 1041

Smarty shows you the template name, the line number and the error. After that, the error consists of the actual line number in the Smarty class that the error occurred.

There are certain errors that Smarty cannot catch, such as missing close tags. These types of errors usually end up in PHP compile-time parsing errors.

Parse error: parse error in /path/to/smarty/templates_c/index.tpl.php on line 75

When you encounter a PHP parsing error, the error line number will correspond to the compiled PHP script, NOT the template itself. Usually you can look at the template and spot the syntax error. Here are some common things to look for: missing close tags for {if}{/if} or {section}{/section}, or syntax of logic within an {if} tag. If you can't find the error, you might have to open the compiled PHP file and go to the line number to figure out where the corresponding error is in the template.

Warning: Smarty error: unable to read resource: "index.tpl" in...
or
Warning: Smarty error: unable to read resource: "site.conf" in...

The $template_dir is incorrect, doesn't exist or the file index.tpl is not in the templates/ directory
A {config_load} function is within a template (or configLoad() has been called) and either $config_dir is incorrect, does not exist or site.conf is not in the directory.

Fatal error: Smarty error: the $compile_dir 'templates_c' does not exist,
or is not a directory...

Either the $compile_diris incorrectly set, the directory does not exist, or templates_c is a file and not a directory.

Fatal error: Smarty error: unable to write to $compile_dir '....

The $compile_dir is not writable by the web server. See the bottom of the installing smarty page for more about permissions.

Fatal error: Smarty error: the $cache_dir 'cache' does not exist,
or is not a directory. in /..

This means that $caching is enabled and either; the $cache_dir is incorrectly set, the directory does not exist, or cache/ is a file and not a directory.

Fatal error: Smarty error: unable to write to $cache_dir '/...

This means that $caching is enabled and the $cache_dir is not writable by the web server. See the bottom of the installing smarty page for permissions.

Warning: filemtime(): stat failed for /path/to/smarty/cache/3ab50a623e65185c49bf17c63c90cc56070ea85c.one.tpl.php 
in /path/to/smarty/libs/sysplugins/smarty_resource.php

This means that your application registered a custom error hander (using set_error_handler()) which is not respecting the given $errno as it should. If, for whatever reason, this is the desired behaviour of your custom error handler, please call muteExpectedErrors() after you've registered your custom error handler.