Configuring Smarty

Setting the template path

By default, Smarty looks for templates to render in ./templates.

You can change this, or even use multiple paths to use when looking for templates.

If you need to change this, you can use setTemplateDir() or addTemplateDir(). Use getTemplateDir() to retrieve the configured paths.

<?php

 // set a single directory where the config files are stored
$smarty->setTemplateDir('./config');

// set multiple directories where config files are stored
$smarty->setTemplateDir(['./config', './config_2', './config_3']);

// add directory where config files are stored to the current list of dirs
$smarty->addTemplateDir('./config_1');

// add multiple directories to the current list of dirs
$smarty->addTemplateDir([
    './config_2',
    './config_3',
]);

// chaining of method calls
$smarty->setTemplateDir('./config')
       ->addTemplateDir('./config_1')
       ->addTemplateDir('./config_2');

// get all directories where config files are stored
$template_dirs = $smarty->getTemplateDir();
var_dump($template_dirs); // array

// get directory identified by key
$template_dir = $smarty->getTemplateDir(0);
var_dump($template_dir); // string

Setting the path for compiled templates

Smarty compiles templates to native PHP to be as fast as possible. The default path where these PHP-files are stored is ./templates_c.

If you need to change this, you can use setCompileDir(). Use getCompileDir() to retrieve the configured path.

<?php

// set another path to store compiled templates
$smarty->setCompileDir('/data/compiled_templates');

// get directory where compiled templates are stored
$compileDir = $smarty->getCompileDir();

Setting the config path

Smarty can load data from config files. By default, Smarty loads the config files from ./configs.

You can change this, or even use multiple paths to use when looking for config files.

If you need to change this, you can use setConfigDir() or addConfigDir(). Use getConfigDir() to retrieve the configured paths.

<?php

 // set a single directory where the config files are stored
$smarty->setConfigDir('./config');

// set multiple directories where config files are stored
$smarty->setConfigDir(['./config', './config_2', './config_3']);

// add directory where config files are stored to the current list of dirs
$smarty->addConfigDir('./config_1');

// add multiple directories to the current list of dirs
$smarty->addConfigDir([
    './config_2',
    './config_3',
]);

// chaining of method calls
$smarty->setConfigDir('./config')
       ->addConfigDir('./config_1', 'one')
       ->addConfigDir('./config_2', 'two');

// get all directories where config files are stored
$config_dirs = $smarty->getConfigDir();
var_dump($config_dirs); // array

// get directory identified by key
$config_dir = $smarty->getConfigDir(0);
var_dump($config_dir); // string

Setting the path for caches

Even though Smarty runs templates as native PHP for maximum speed, it still needs to execute the PHP code on each call. If your data doesn't change all that often, you may be able to speed up your application even more by using output caching.

Output caching can be a tricky subject, so we devoted an entire section to caching. Be sure to read that if you want to use caching.

By default, Smarty stores caches to PHP-files in a subdirectory named ./cache.

If you need to change this, you can use setCacheDir(). Use getCacheDir() to retrieve the configured path.

<?php

// set another path to store caches
$smarty->setCacheDir('/data/caches');

// get directory where cached templates are stored
$cacheDir = $smarty->getCacheDir();

Enabling auto-escaping

By default, Smarty does not escape anything you render in your templates. If you use Smarty to render a HTML-page, this means that you will have to make sure that you do not render any characters that have a special meaning in HTML, such as &, < and >, or apply the escape modifier to anything you want to render.

If you forget to do so, you may break your HTML page, or even create a vulnerability for attacks known as XSS or Cross Site Scripting.

Luckily, you can tell Smarty to automatically apply the escape modifier to any dynamic part of your template. It's like Smarty magically adds |escape to every variable you use on a web page.

Enable auto-escaping for HTML as follows:

$smarty->setEscapeHtml(true);

Disabling compile check

By default, Smarty tests to see if the current template has changed since the last time it was compiled. If it has changed, it recompiles that template.

Once an application is put into production, this compile-check step is usually no longer needed and the extra checks can significantly hurt performance. Be sure to disable compile checking on production for maximum performance.

<?php
$smarty->setCompileCheck(\Smarty\Smarty::COMPILECHECK_OFF);

If caching is enabled and compile-check is enabled, then the cache files will get regenerated if an involved template file or config file was updated.

Charset encoding

There are a variety of encodings for textual data, ISO-8859-1 (Latin1) and UTF-8 being the most popular. Unless you change \Smarty\Smarty::$_CHARSET, Smarty recognizes UTF-8 as the internal charset.

Note

ISO-8859-1 has been PHP\'s default internal charset since the beginning. Unicode has been evolving since 1991. Since then, it has become the one charset to conquer them all, as it is capable of encoding most of the known characters even across different character systems (latin, cyrillic, japanese, ...). UTF-8 is unicode\'s most used encoding, as it allows referencing the thousands of character with the smallest size overhead possible.

Since unicode and UTF-8 are very widespread nowadays, their use is strongly encouraged.

Note

Smarty\'s internals and core plugins are truly UTF-8 compatible since Smarty 3.1.

<?php

// use japanese character encoding
mb_internal_charset('EUC-JP');

\Smarty\Smarty::$_CHARSET = 'EUC-JP';
$smarty = new \Smarty\Smarty();