Basics

Installation

For installation instructies, please see the getting started section.

Rendering a template

Here's how you create an instance of Smarty in your PHP scripts:

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Smarty\Smarty;
$smarty = new Smarty();

You now have a Smarty object that you can use to render templates.

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Smarty\Smarty;
$smarty = new Smarty();

$smarty->display('string:The current smarty version is: {$smarty.version}.');
// or 
echo $smarty->fetch('string:The current smarty version is: {$smarty.version}.');

Using file-based templates

You probably want to manage your templates as files. Create a subdirectory called 'templates' and then configure Smarty to use that:

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Smarty\Smarty;
$smarty = new Smarty();

$smarty->setTemplateDir(__DIR__ . '/templates');

Say you have a template file called 'version.tpl', stored in the 'templates' directory like this:

<h1>Hi</h1>
The current smarty version is: {$smarty.version|escape}.

You can now render this, using:

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Smarty\Smarty;
$smarty = new Smarty();

$smarty->setTemplateDir(__DIR__ . '/templates');
$smarty->display('version.tpl');

Assigning variables

Templates start to become really useful once you add variables to the mix.

Create a template called 'footer.tpl' in the 'templates' directory like this:

<small>Copyright {$companyName|escape}</small>

Now assign a value to the 'companyName' variable and render your template like this:

<?php

require 'vendor/autoload.php';
use Smarty\Smarty;
$smarty = new Smarty();

$smarty->setTemplateDir(__DIR__ . '/templates');
$smarty->assign('companyName', 'AC & ME Corp.');
$smarty->display('footer.tpl');

Run this, and you will see:

<small>Copyright AC &amp; ME Corp.</small>

Note how the escape modifier translated the & character into the proper HTML syntax &. Read more about auto-escaping in the next section.