Ever want to break a small PHP app into an MVC-ish convention without the need of tacking on a massive templating engine? Are you opposed to remembering new syntax just for a template? Why not just use some ob_* code to roll your own simple templating engine?
This will allow you to create PHP includes which will render as templates so you can organize your app into an MVC-ish layout.
<?php
class MissingTemplateException extends Exception {}
function render_template($template_file, $vars = array())
{
if(file_exists($template_file))
{
ob_start();
extract($vars);
include($template_file);
return ob_get_clean();
}else
throw new MissingTemplateException("Template: {$template_file} could not be found!");
}
function my_action()
{
$name = 'Rob';
$company = 'Globalcom';
return render_template('template.phtml', array('name' => $name, 'company' => $company));
}
echo my_action(); // => "Hello Rob! You work at Globalcom, don't you?"
?>
Usage
Hello <?= $name ?>! You work at <?= $company ?>, don't you?
Simple.