The top 3 "Don'ts" of eZ Publish? Any concepts eZ should let go?

Wednesday 09 February 2011 2:51:51 pm

Just a note on my side. i agree template language could be better... but i wouldn't like an eZ Publish in which pure php code is merged with html tags.

i've worked with other cms when this is is quite possible (yeah, that cms... :)) and sometimes you see codes in wich mysql_connect sentences are merged with <ul> or <div> tags.

mmm... no, i can't see a eZ Publish having something like

<h1><?php echo $currentnode->attribute( 'name' )?></h1>
<ul>
<?php $nodes = eZContentObjectTreeNode::subTreeByNodeId( array(), $node_id );
foreach( $nodes as $node ) {?>
<li><?php echo $node->attribute( 'name' )?></li>
</ul>
<?php } ?>

It starts there and it ends trying to do sql queries to directly to content tables...

for me separation between content and design is one of the best things of eZ. admiting that some times it's tedious and frustrating, i still don't know a more flexible one in this part.

+1 for adding the voting possible new features.

Thursday 10 February 2011 1:35:07 am

PHP templates are not THAT bad, it just depends on the coding standards you use. The fact that you can use PHP directly doesn't mean you should use all the features from PHP if you want to maintain readability.

I use them on a project of mine, and this is the kind of code I have:

<h1><?=$title?></h1>
<p class="foo"><?=$content?>
<ul>
  <?php foreach( $items as $item ): ?>
  <li>
    <?php if ( $item->stuff ): ?>
    <a href="<?=$item->link?>"><?=$item->text?></a>
    <?php else: ?>
    <?=$item->text?>
    <?php endif ?>
  </li>
  <?php endforeach ?>
</ul>

This keeps code readable, with the minimal amount of PHP code, and I Have to say I kinda like it.

P.S. I'm by no mean saying we should get rid of a template engine ;-)

Bertrand Dunogier
eZ Systems Engineering, Lyon
http://twitter.com/bdunogier
http://gplus.to/BertrandDunogier

Thursday 10 February 2011 5:43:21 am

My 2 pences on the template language :

I think the eZC / Zeta Components template engine is cleaner than the one currently implemented in eZPublish. The main features are the following :

• The template as an interface you must fill to know which variables are set inside the template. It is very clean and allow you to rapidly know what can be wrong or not in your template. If you're a noob in eZ, you may ask what are $#node or other subtleties in the template. This can also enforce the good practices and the use of already set data, see "Variables in page layout" in the reference. By the way it can be tricky to implement for eZPublish unless having a kind of big table to store everything.
• In term of i18n and cache, the components already provide "tied in" components that are doing this. If we don't want to use those, we can still made new functions that handle the former PHP functions / operators.
• In term of syntax, ezc is closer to PHP syntax than the current eztemplate engine.

What is missing is :

• The content related functions : attribute_view_gui, node_view_gui and so on. Not so difficult to implement.
• The dot syntax that is very useful in templates. This allows to either access an object attribute, a value of an array or run a function.

Coding for 2 years now with ezcTemplate, I think it can be the best valuable thing that can happen to eZP.

Maxime Thomas
maxime.thomas@wascou.org | www.wascou.org | http://twitter.com/wascou

Company Blog : http://www.wascou.org/eng/Company/Blog
Technical Blog : http://share.ez.no/blogs/maxime-thomas