Escaping Smarty parsing

It is sometimes desirable or even necessary to have Smarty ignore sections it would otherwise parse. A classic example is embedding Javascript or CSS code in a template. The problem arises as those languages use the { and } characters which are also the default delimiters for Smarty.

Note

A good practice for avoiding escapement altogether is by separating your Javascript/CSS into their own files and use standard HTML methods to access them. This will also take advantage of browser script caching. When you need to embed Smarty variables/functions into your Javascript/CSS, then the following applies.

In Smarty templates, the { and } braces will be ignored so long as they are surrounded by white space. This behavior can be disabled by setting the Smarty class variable $auto_literal to false.

Examples

<script>
   // the following braces are ignored by Smarty
   // since they are surrounded by whitespace
   function foobar {
    alert('foobar!');
   }
   // this one will need literal escapement
   {literal}
    function bazzy {alert('foobar!');}
   {/literal}
</script>

{literal}..{/literal} blocks are used for escaping blocks of template logic. You can also escape the braces individually with {ldelim}, {rdelim} tags or {$smarty.ldelim},{$smarty.rdelim} variables.

Smarty's default delimiters { and } cleanly represent presentational content. However, if another set of delimiters suit your needs better, you can change them with Smarty's setLeftDelimiter() and setRightDelimiter() methods.

Note

Changing delimiters affects ALL template syntax and escapement. Be sure to clear out cache and compiled files if you decide to change them.

<?php

$smarty->setLeftDelimiter('<!--{');
$smarty->setRightDelimiter('}-->');

$smarty->assign('foo', 'bar');
$smarty->assign('name', 'Albert');
$smarty->display('example.tpl');

Where the template is:

Welcome <!--{$name}--> to Smarty
    <script>
  var foo = <!--{$foo}-->;
  function dosomething() {
    alert("foo is " + foo);
  }
  dosomething();
</script>